MENTAL EVOLUTION IN MAN. 43 



all introspection is retrospection. But how then 

 about the comparative method ? Nobody knows 

 any mind but his own, and not much of that For 

 as he tries to look back to the earlier stages the 

 words of memory become inarticulate and its 

 characters illegible. And how does he know that 

 other men have minds, or that they are at all like 

 his own? And what about the familiar process 

 of " tossing about psychological babies," as Dr. 

 Martineau calls it, " and wringing from them 

 ambiguas voces as to how they feel " ? The psycho- 

 logy of other people's children only looks more 

 legible than the recollection of one's own childhood, 

 because we think we read there what we really 

 read into it. 



We are not here raising a difficulty which Mr. 

 Romanes is not fully aware of. His answer 

 would be, that other people's minds are to 

 us neither subjects, like our own is, nor objects, 

 like that which we can study physiologically, but 

 ejects. The word is borrowed from Professor 

 Clifford, and is used to mean an inference from 

 acts or movements observed, which acts or move- 

 ments, in our own experience, have been associated 

 with certain psychological facts, and are therefore 

 assumed to be a guarantee for the presence in 

 others of similar facts. In the case of our fellow- 

 men this assumption is undoubtedly made, and if 

 it is not always justified, it is frequently confirmed 



