8 THE ORIGIN OF HUMAN REASON. 



nevertheless a view which appears to us to be absurdly 

 unwarranted and one not only without evidence but 

 against it. 



(6) As to infants too young to show intelligence, and 

 as to savages so degraded (if any such there be) as not 

 to appear unequivocally intellectual, we judge of their 

 essential nature by the outcome of education in the first 

 case, and by the analogy of their fellow-men in the second 

 case. This outcome and this analogy lead us to credit 

 such infants and such savages with the possession of 

 a latent intellectual nature which physical conditions 

 (their undeveloped frame or their unfavourable environ- 

 ment) do not allow them to make externally manifest. 

 We judge the very opposite (also from outcome and 

 analogy) in the case of brutes. 



(7) Thus we deem that no human state of existence, 

 however abnormal, can be really " brutal," and that the 

 psychical activity of no brute, however startling, can be 

 really " intellectual." We should expect, moreover, that 

 an adult human being, who could give no evidence of 

 rationality, would (being in an abnormal condition) be 

 capable of even less than a mere animal — the non- 

 intellectual condition of which is noj^mal. Similarly, the 

 possession of intellect, as well as passions and a power 

 of will, would lead us to expect to find occasionally 

 amongst mankind, more perverted and more profoundly 

 irrational actions than in the case of brutes, which, we 

 believe, have no voluntary power of applying their intel- 

 lectual and physical activities in consciously perverted 

 modes. 



(8) We consider that it is congruous and according to 



