MENTAL EVOLUTION IN MAN. 



CHAPTER I. 



MAN AND BRUTE. 



Taking up the problems of psychogencsis where these were 

 left in my previous work, I have in the present treatise to 

 consider the whole scope of mental evolution in man. Clearly 

 the topic thus presented is so large, that in one or other of its 

 branches it might be taken to include the whole history of 

 our species, together with our pre-historic development from 

 lower forms of life, as already indicated in the Preface. How- 

 ever, it is not my intention to write a history of civilization, 

 still less to develop any elaborate hypothesis of anthropogeny. 

 My object is merely to carry into an investigation of human 

 psychology a continuation of the principles which I have 

 already applied to the attempted elucidation of animal psycho- 

 logy. I desire to show that in the one province, as in the 

 other, the light which has been shed by the doctrine of evolu- 

 tion is of a magnitude which we are now only beginning to 

 appreciate ; and that by adopting the theory of continuous 

 development from the one order of mind to the other, we are 

 able scientifically to explain the whole mental constitution of 

 man, even in those parts of it which, to former generations, 

 have appeared inexplicable. 



In order to accomplish this purpose, it is not needful that 

 I should seek to enter upon matters of detail in the applica- 

 tion of those principles to the facts of history. On the contrary, 



