THE PATH OF EVOLUTION' 



tion would repeat itself indefinitely until slowly the 

 numerous varieties of creatures that now exist were 

 formed. This is the process of the Evolution of 

 Life ! The highest step therein is that which has 

 given to the brain of man the ability to turn into 

 subjective thought and distinct memory the conscious- 

 ness that is past. In the lower brain of animals this 

 ability scarcely, if ever, lived ; but the unconscious 

 record of inherited memories impressed thereon, be- 

 came the instincts, that in them moved and governed, 

 but knew not why, repeating without subjective 

 thought the actions that their ancestors had often done 

 before. * 



* The often repeated acts of their progenitors, producing by "co-as- 

 sociation of the nerve cells, those reflex actions, partly conscious, 

 partly involuntary in their descendants, that we name instincts." 

 They are called into being by the stimulus offered by its hunger or 

 by its other wants. This co-ordination of nerve cells, stimulus and 

 reflex action had become hereditary. 



W. Benthall, M. D. Read before the Derby Medical Society. 

 (From the Sci. Amer. Supt., Nov. 16, 1901.) 



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