128 EVOLUTION AND MAN S PLACE IN NATURE 



large or small, moving or at rest, but it is one of a 

 class grouped under a common name, selected to aid 

 us in this work. We keep adding to the value of 

 classifications as we continue observations. Sensations 

 are thus seen to be only the first tenants of conscious 

 ness. In noting their presence, intelligence wakens 

 up to activity. Sensations are thus lower than 

 observations, observations being our interpretations 

 of sensation. This rational activity belongs even 

 to the childhood of our rational life. There is a 

 native power in man which uses the special senses as 

 a mechanic uses his tools. If we cannot with strict 

 accuracy speak of inherited knowledge/ though 

 Herbert Spencer thinks we may, certainly rational 

 faculty must be described as inheritance, so much 

 given to us as the condition of knowledge, just as the 

 merchant must have his stock-in-trade for bargain- 

 making. In the act of observing, we use laws of 

 thought, specially applying a law of causality so as to 

 interpret successive experiences. Without these, 

 observation would be impossible; education could 

 make no progress ; science could not have a beginning. 

 Let us attend for a moment to the internal 

 observation involved in marking the differences in our 

 own feelings. Though we name this introspection/ 

 and often speak of it as if it were a .difficult exercise, 

 it is common to mankind from earliest years. How a 

 man felt in given circumstances is a common subject 

 of remark. Thus we single out differences in our 

 consciousness. On some of these we have relied, in 

 affirming differences in objects. We mark successive 

 phases of experience, much wider and more varied 

 than these, such as our emotions, which have no 



