INSTINCT AND EEASON. 



AN initial probability has been established by Mr. 

 Darwin and Mr. Wallace that the reason or mind of 

 man, as well as his body, has attained its present com- 

 plete excellence through gradual development. No one 

 denies that, between a man's birth and his prime of life, 

 time is required for the intellectual powers to unfold ; 

 but it demands an effort which few have as yet made to 

 see in this progression of the individual mind a com- 

 pendious history of the indefinitely slow process by 

 which the human mind itself has been formed, passing 

 upward, step by step, from simple vitality, dawning 

 consciousness, the various grades of so-called instinct, 

 to the full capacities of the most enlightened reason. 



The theory of development or evolution has excited 

 immense opposition and distrust, because of its obvious 

 application to the human body. Its application to the 

 human mind, which, though less obvious at the first 

 glance, almost inevitably follows, seems to have inspired 

 Mr. Wallace himself with alarm. He winds up the 

 admirable series of essays in which he supports the 

 theory under discussion with one that earnestly pro- 

 pounds ' the limits of natural selection as applied to 

 man.' His arguments on this subject are drawn from 



