SENSORY AND RATIONAL DISCRIMINATION 139 



whether the law of continuity, which it has not 

 pleased his Maker to break with respect to his bodily 

 structure, and which binds that, in the unity of one 

 great type, to the lower forms of animal life by the 

 common conditions of nourishment, reproduction, 

 and self-defence, has not rendered necessary both 

 the physical appetites and the propensities which 

 terminate in self; whether, again, the superior en 

 dowments of his intellectual nature, his susceptibility 

 of moral emotion, and of those disinterested affections 

 which, if not exclusively, he far more intensely 

 possesses than any inferior being ; above all, the 

 gifts of conscience, and a capacity to know God, 

 might not be expected, even beforehand, by their 

 conflict with the animal passions, to produce some 

 partial inconsistencies, some anomalies, at least, 

 which he could not himself explain, in so compound 

 a being/ 1 These references may suffice to indicate 

 the general drift of thought, from many Avidely 

 separated regions, flowing into a common channel. 



If only the work accomplished by rational power be 

 fully stated, it becomes clear that the most thorough 

 investigations of organic structure and function, fail 

 to supply a scientific account of human procedure. 



Darwin has said that The lower animals differ 

 from man solely in the almost infinitely larger power 

 of associating together the most diversified sounds 

 and ideas. 2 This statement of the contrast is 

 inadequate. Associating sounds and ideas is a 

 meagre representation of the ordinary exercises of 

 mind. Formation of ideas must come before their 

 association, and when the earlier process is explained, 



^ Literature of Europe, vol. iv. p. 45. - Descent of Man, p. 85. 



