404 THE LAW OF EVOLUTION CONCLUDED. 



volved sentence, to follow long trains of reasoning, to hold 

 in one mental grasp numerous concurrent circumstances. 

 The like progressive integration takes place among the 

 mental changes we distinguish as feelings ; which in a child 

 act singly, producing impulsiveness, but in an adult act more 

 in concert, producing a comparatively balanced conduct. 



After these illustrations supplied by individual evolu- 

 tion, we may deal briefly with those supplied by general evo- 

 lution, which are analogous to them. A creature of very low 

 intelligence, when aware of some large object in motion 

 near it, makes a spasmodic movement, causing, it may 

 be, a leap or a dart. The perceptions implied are rela- 

 tively simple, homogeneous, and indefinite : the moving ob- 

 jects are not distinguished in their kinds as injurious or 

 otherwise, as advancing or receding. The actions of escape 

 are similarly all of one kind, have no adjustments of direc- 

 tion, and may bring the creature nearer the source of peril 

 instead of further off. A stage higher, when the dart or the 

 leap is away from danger, we see the nervous changes so 

 far specialized that there results distinction of direction; 

 indicating a greater variety among them, a greater co-ordi- 

 nation or integration of them in each process, and a greater 

 defmiteness. In still higher animals that discriminate be- 

 tween enemies and not-enemies, as a bird that flies- from a 

 man but not from a cow, the acts of perception have 

 severally become united into more complex wholes, since 

 cognition of certain differential attributes is implied; they 

 have become more multiform, since each additional com- 

 ponent impression adds to the number of possible com- 

 pounds; and they have, by consequence, become more spe- 

 cific in their correspondences with objects — more definite. 

 And then in animals so intelligent that they identify by 

 sight not species only but individuals of a species, the 

 mental changes are yet further distinguished in the same 

 three ways. In the course of human evolution the 



law is equally manifested. The thoughts of the savage are 



