The Ecolntlon of Mliid. 189 



qualities and kinds must become greater and greater with 

 the progress of the senses. Eyeless animals cannot distin- 

 guish between red, green and violet. No such experiences 

 are ever known to them. Eeasoning and experimenting 

 beings extend this correspondence to an enormous extent. 

 With the accumulation of facts of difference, are soon ob- 

 served facts of resemblance among things otherwise very 

 much unlike. The discovery of these establishes new 

 groups of mental relations answering to such outer condi- 

 tions.* From the simj)le, we go on to the complex. The 

 generalizations of science transcend the mental power of 

 the rustic in their broadness, and he has but little concep- 

 tion even of their number. His well founded reasons for 

 certain of his acts and beliefs would seriously puzzle a 

 savage, while the thoughts and deeds of the latter would be 

 equally mysterious to a chinqjanzee. The subsuming of 

 isolated facts into higher and higher classes has been going 

 on from the amoeba to man. The highest and last great 

 generalization, that of evolution itself, is but the latest 

 stone laid on the walls of a temple whose foundation was 

 laid by the lowest possible efforts in the generalization of 

 brutes. To consider therefore that ou.r mental powers were 

 born in a cradle of darkness and sorrow, nurtured amid the 

 cruel throes of agony,t and that step by step has been one 

 continuous series of triumphant gains of peace and joy, 

 should make us proud of our humble lineage, and prouder 

 still of that tinal goal whitlier we trend. In the deep, un- 

 utterable longings of sanctilied ho]je, one incessant, heart- 

 felt prayer has resounded down the ages from the primitive 

 amoeba to the civilized man. Devotion so continuous de- 

 served and has received a large reward. (Jur Newtons and 

 Spencers, Kants and Darwins, Goethes and Shakspeares, 

 are but the first fruits of a harvest whose coming bounty 

 no husbandman can comjnite.l There have been no leaps 

 along the line, no letting in of new elements. An unbroken 

 continuity is everywhere discernible. " The most elevated 

 phenomena are the effects of a conqjlication that has come 

 out of the simplest elements by insensible degrees. "§ From 

 fundamental indivisable awareness, with its memory, feeling 

 and will, have come perceptions and conceptions, judgments 

 and imaginations, instincts and reasons. These are all but 



* Spencer's I'sj-cliology, pp. 342-349. 



t Proc. Aiiier. Assoc. Adv. Sci., 1883, pi). 44-48. 



t Pop. Sci. Mon., Vol. 7, pp. Gl, 02. § Uibot's English Psycbology, p. 1G4. 



