1420 LIFE : OUTLINES OF GENERAL BIOLOGY 



ORIGIN OF HIGHER FACULTIES ?— Is not this a crucial problem 

 and puzzle before the evolutionist ? It is now relatively easy to t^ace 

 the evolution of man's form and face from ruder ancestors, since 

 "missing links" have been and are being found from time to time: 

 but as for the origin of his higher psychology, so far beyond the 

 brute's and even the highest ape's — that has always seemed a far 

 harder matter. So much so, indeed, that while Darwin and other 

 evolutionists mostly have avoided this question, and some have 

 simply begged it, we have had the striking case of Darwin's foremost 

 contemporary, Alfred Russel Wallace, who having pondered much 

 on the question of how either the mathematical, the musical, or the 

 philosophical faculty, and the like, could have arisen, and been 

 selected for survival in their early struggles for existence, candidly 

 avowed his failure; and fell back upon the hypothesis of "a. spiritual 

 influx" for them; in other words a practical return to the very 

 doctrine of special creation which he had done so much to replace 

 by his own evolutionary one. But however this answer did credit 

 to his candour in admitting his difficulty, and to his intellectual 

 persistence in seeking some explanation, it is obviously incompatible 

 with the general concept of evolution, and even that general faith 

 in the order and unity of the universe, which science as well as 

 theology firmly holds by, though each in its own way. Hence, as 

 evolutionists, we cannot give up this problem; but we must give it 

 another trial. First of all, since no naturalistic evolutionist — even 

 the most indifferent we can imagine to religions with their doctrines, 

 symbolisms, and mysticisms, to philosophy with its many and 

 distinctive systems, to mathematics with its labyrinthine and 

 abstruse developments, or to arts and music, poetry and drama — 

 would for a moment deny their existence: he would still think of 

 them as somehow products of human evolution, however outside his 

 particular field, and so to him irrelevant, if not disturbing. Thus we 

 have to take him with us, and face his criticism, even rouse his 

 interest, in the quest of some rational and natural explanation of 

 their respective origins; the more since he may admit on reflection 

 that these may not be unrelated to the origin of his own scientific 

 interests and powers — also not yet explained by him, evolutionist 

 though he be. And as naturahst, he employs that sensing of his 

 environment, that experience derived Irom activities, and that 

 feeling for his kind, which man so plainly shares with the animal 

 world, its higher forms especially. But his criticism is entitled to 

 come in, and is indeed specially wanted, when we set out from these 

 to explain those higher faculties of man which the animal has not 

 attained to. Thus starting at the simplest and least controversial, 

 let us each recall, from our visual sense, its memory-images — say of 

 man, horse, and bird, all unmistakably distinct, and since earlier 

 infancy than we can remember. Imagine next a good ride and 



