INTRODUCTORY. 



expected to undergo (as he does undergo) an anatomical 

 and sensuous development similar to what we find in 

 those animals, the adult condition of which he most 

 nearly resembles. But even here there is a startling 

 difference. In no known apes are the young nearly so 

 slow in their bodily development as children are, and in 

 no mere animals do the psychical powers shoot forward 

 so wonderfully in advance of bodily evolution as they 

 do in man. These facts we rely upon with confidence 

 as affording another strong a priori probability the 

 exact reverse of that for which Mr. Romanes believes 

 he has found evidence. 



The fourth and last ci priori argument of our authof 

 is drawn from the fact that " the intelligence of the 

 [human] race has been subject to a steady process of 

 gradual development" in the arts and appliances of life. 

 Therefore, he urges, since mental evolution has con- 

 tinued in man since he first appeared, we must deem it 

 probable that it continued before he appeared, and so 

 produced him. But here again the facts seem to us to 



Birds are compared for intelligence with infants eight months old ; 

 but how great is the divergence between different birds as to their 

 psychical powers! Hymenoptera (wasps, bees, ants, aphides, 

 ichneumons, etc.) are compared with infants of five months : but 

 how great, again, is the difference between an entirely sluggish 

 cochineal insect and an ant ! Instead of these circumstances 

 tending to prove that there is no difference of kind between man 

 and brute, it might rather indicate that different kinds of animals 

 have a radically different fundamental nature, and that however 

 their bodily form may have been — to our sense perceptions — ■ 

 continuously evolved from that of antecedent species, the formation 

 of their really essential nature has been due to some discon- 

 tinuous action parallel with, however inferior in intensity or degree 

 to, that which has formed the essential nature of man himself. 



