136 THE DAWN OF MIND. 



differentiated phenomena of consciousness are the first 

 to give way ; impulse, instinct, and reflex movements 

 become again predominant. The phrase ' to grow 

 childish ' expresses the resemblance between the first 

 stage and the stage of dissolution." 1 



That the highest part of man should totter first is 

 what, on the theory of mental evolution, one would 

 Already have expected. The highest part is the latest 

 added part, and the latest added part is the least 

 secured part. As the last arrival, it is not yet at 

 home ; it has not had time to get lastingly embedded 

 in the brain; the competition of older faculties is 

 against it ; the hold of the will upon it is slight and 

 fitful ; its tenure as a tenant is precarious and often 

 threatened. Among the older and more permanent 

 residents, therefore, it has little chance. Hence if 

 anything goes wrong, as the last added, the most com- 

 plex, the least automatic of all the functions, it is the 

 first to suffer. 



We are but too familiar with cases where men of 

 lofty intellect and women of most pure mind, seized 

 in the awful grasp of madness, are transformed in 

 a few brief months into beings worse than brutes. 

 How are we to account, on any other principle than 

 this, for that most shocking of all catastrophes the 

 sudden and total break-up, the devolution, of a saint ? 

 That the wise man should become a chattering idiot is 

 inexplicable enough, but that the saintly soul should 

 riot in blasphemy and immorality so foul that not 

 among the lowest races is there anything to liken to 

 it — these are phenomena so staggering that if Evolu- 

 tion hold any key to them at all, its suggestion must 

 1 Hoffding, Pyschology, p. 92. 



