388 METAPHYSICAL EVOLUTION. 



one of the stages of childhood of the most perfect humanity. To 

 this must be added revenge, where hatred may be re-enforced by 

 several other sentiments, with a feeble perception of equivalent 

 suffering or punishment, which may or may not be just. The 

 pleasure of muscular exercise is greatly developed in people of out- 

 door habits. 



The order of the appearance of the intelligence is nearly de- 

 pendent on the development of the powers of observation. In 

 most savages these are very acute, and vary according to the na- 

 ture of the environment which impresses them. The character 

 of most civilizations tends to diminish the power of the percep- 

 tive, while the higher departments of imagination and reason are 

 enlarged. The imagination reached a high development before 

 reason had attained much strength. With the exception of a few 

 families, the intelligence of mankind has, up to within two or 

 three centuries, expressed itself in works of the imagination. 

 When exact knowledge first began to be cultivated, it was in the 

 department of astronomy, where the least precision was attain- 

 able, and where the greatest scope for the imagination is to be 

 found.* Next in time metaphysics was the throne of learning, a 

 field in which much may be said with the least possible reference 

 to the facts of observation. With the modern cultivation of the 

 natural and physical sciences, the perceptive faculties will be 

 restored, it is to be hoped, to their true place, and thus many 

 avenues opened up for the higher though t-jjower of a developed 

 race. Thus it is that in the order of human development there 

 is to be a return to the primitive powers of observation, without 

 loss of the later acquired and more noble capacities of the intellect. 



The relation of the qualities of impressibility, fineness, inten- 

 sity, speed and tenacity, to our development in time, may have 

 been as follows : Impressibility of mind is no doubt an embryonic 

 character of " retardation," parallel to, and probably a consequence 

 of, the retardation which is also expressed in the human skull and 

 face. The prejionderance of the osseous and nutritive elements 

 over the nervous is the usual accompaniment of non-impressi- 

 bility, and vice versa. Hence this quality is of late origin in the 



* The governments of antiquity required the knowledge of the Chaldean astrono- 

 mers as important to the success of their undertakings, and the governments of 

 Europe and America were, for a long period, more liberal in their support of as- 

 tronomy than any other science. At present, howcvei', geology shares in this aid, 

 and to a less degree botany and zoology. 



