n6 THE PSYCHICAL KINSHIP 



courage, fidelity, good and bad temper, intelligence, 

 timidity, special tastes and aptitudes, are cer- 

 tainly transmitted in all the higher orders of 

 animal life. 



Animals are also selected, are enabled to survive 

 in the struggle for life quite as much through the 

 possession by them of certain mental qualities as 

 on account of their physical characters. Whether 

 the selections are made by nature or by man, they 

 are not determined by the physical facts of size, 

 strength, speed, and the like, more than by cunning, 

 courage, sagacity, skill, industry, devotion, ferocity, 

 tractability, and other mental properties. The 

 fittest survive, and the fittest may be the most 

 timid or analytic as well as the most powerful. 

 No better illustration of this truth can be found 

 than that furnished by man himself. Man is by 

 nature a comparatively feeble animal. He is 

 neither large nor powerful. Yet he has been 

 selected to prosper over all other animals because 

 of his ingenuity, sympathy, and art. The great 

 feeling and civilisation of higher men have been 

 built up by slow accretion due to the operation of 

 the law of survival extending over vast measures 

 of time. Creeds and instincts, governments and 

 impulses, forms of thought and forms of expres- 

 sion, have struggled and survived just as have 

 cells and species. A struggle for existence is 

 constantly going on, as Max Muller has pointed 

 out, even among the words and grammatical 

 forms of every language. The better, shorter, 

 easier forms are constantly gaining the ascendancy, 



