532 MAX'S PLACE IN NATURE 



of the intellectual life. In man as in other animals, 

 agreeable and disagreeable emotions are aroused under 

 particular conditions and are accompanied by charac- 

 teristic bodily changes. In all these fundamental matters 

 there is no escaping the conclusion that man is at one 

 with the whole group of mammals to which he belongs. 



The Fact of Progress. — Notwithstanding the points 

 of similarity emphasized in the last paragraph, one who 

 studies human behavior in comparison with the behavior 

 of higher animals cannot fail to be struck with a feature 

 of difference which is absolutely fundamental and which, 

 in fact, sets man in a category by himself. In a word, 

 this difference lies — as expressed in the head of this 

 paragraph — in the fact of human progress which con- 

 trasts with the absence of progress among the other 

 animals. What is meant by progress in this connection 

 is simply this: human beings, from generation to genera- 

 tion, behave differently from the generations which pre- 

 ceded them, they do new things and think new thoughts. 

 Animals, on the other hand, generation by generation, 

 behave in a manner which does not essentially change, 

 their reactions to the environment are on the whole the 

 same now as they were hundreds of generations ago. 

 This difference in behavior is both real and fundamental, 

 and to the extent to which it can be explained man's 

 position in nature in comparison with the other animals' 

 can be made clear. 



The Human Race Unchanged. — If we were to find 

 present generations of animals behaving differently from 

 past generations, we should have no hesitation in as- 

 serting such difference in behavior to be due to bodily 

 alterations. The changes in human behavior from gen- 

 eration to generation are not thus accounted for. The 

 evidence is convincing that man in his present physical, 

 intellectual, and emotional characters has existed on the 

 earth since the beginning of recorded history, and in all 

 likelihood for a period at least two or three times as long 



