4o6 NATURE AND MAN. 



a mere automaton — its life-movements for some time being of a 

 purely " reflex " character, such as may be carried on without 

 even any exercise of consciousness. And for long after the 

 child has begun to receive and register sensory impressions, 

 has learned to understand articulate speech, and is acquiring 

 knowledge of ideas as well as of objects of sense, any parent who 

 attentively compares its psychical manifestations with those of an 

 intelligent dog will recognize the close correspondence between 

 them. The uncontrolled dominance of impulses to action shows 

 itself in both alike ; and in the training of one, as of the other, we 

 have to make our appeal to the strongest motive. But the time 

 comes when we can fix the attention of the Human child on the 

 motive which he knows ought to prevail ; and in proportion as he 

 acquires, by habitual effort, the power of regulating the exercise of 

 his intellectual powers, and of controlling the action of his moral 

 and emotional forces, in that proportion does he become respon- 

 sible for his conduct, and capable of further self-elevation. 



Thus, then, it is a simple ?naiter of fact, revealed by continuous 

 observation of the history of the Human individual, that the very 

 highest grade of humanity is only attained by a process of con- 

 timious ez'olution from the very lowest and simplest. For while his 

 bodily evolution takes place in accordance with the plan common to 

 the whole animal creation, the same is equally true of his psychical. 

 The infantile condition is the same in all races of mankind, and 

 child-nature presents itself everywhere under an aspect essentially 

 the same ; but whilst in some races an arrest of development 

 causes that nature to be retained through the whole of life, others 

 present an ascending series of stages, that culminate in what we 

 regard as the highest products of mental and moral culture. But 

 even among the races which as a whole are most advanced, we find 

 not individuals only, but grievously large numbers, in whom a bad 

 heredity and depraved surroundings have tended to foster the 

 lower animal nature at the expense of that which is distinctively 

 human ; and thus to rear a set of creatures which are morally far 

 nearer akin to the brute, than they are to more elevated types of 

 humanity. In these degraded outcasts we have the true types of 

 fallen man ; but it is now coming to be generally recognized 

 by scientific men, that the early history of the race generally, as 



