58 



to the treatment which it has received at the hands of Mr. 

 Herbert Spencer." 1 "Pleasures and pains must have been 

 evolved as the subjective accompaniments of processes which 

 are respectively beneficial or injurious to the organism, and 

 so evolved for the purpose or to the end that the organism 

 should seek the one and shun the other." 2 



In dealing with the relation of the physical to the psychical 

 Romanes does not, of course, as may be seen from the above 

 quotations, claim that psychological phenomena are caused 

 by physical and physiological processes, although words 

 which imply the same thing are used. The dependence, how- 

 ever, is so intimate and exact, that one is not surprised when 

 he reads: "Throughout, I take it for granted that the associa- 

 tion of neurosis and psychosis is as invariable and precise as 

 it would be were it proved to be due to a relation of causality." 3 

 But for all practical purposes it is difficult to see what differ- 

 ence it would have made if that terminology had been adopted 

 by Romanes, for the significance of his standpoint all through 

 appears to be the "precise" dependence of the psychical upon 

 the physical, the latter being the factor of primary importance 

 that with which the process of evolution has to do. Other- 

 wise it were a waste of time to compile such extensive treatises 

 on the nervous system when one wishes to deal with mental 

 phenomena. When, then, we find that the development of 

 the nervous system has been due to the working of the prin- 

 ciple of natural selection, the corollary is evident: evolution 

 as applied genetically to mental phenomena means nothing 

 more or less than the application of a biological law to psycho- 

 logical facts, and this, for Romanes, is so simple and evident, 

 as to be capable of graphical representation. "I have 

 thought it a good plan," he says, "to draw a diagram or map 

 of the probable development of mind from its first beginnings 

 in protoplasmic life up to its culmination in the brain of 

 civilized man.." 4 



Throughout 'Animal Intelligence', and more particularly 

 in 'Mental Evolution in Animals', the development of mental 

 phenomena from their first beginnings in the lowest organisms 

 has been outlined. In the final work 5 evidence is adduced 

 from the sphere of child psychology in addition to the basis of 

 animal psychology already established. 



*O.C. p. 105. 

 'O.C. p. 108. 

 8 O.C. p. 39. 

 KXC. p. 63. 



^George J. Romanes, "Mental Evolution in Man", D. Appleton & Co., 

 1889. 



