276 MENTAL LIFE OF APES AND MONKEYS 
faculty of arriving at the practical conclusion as to the kind 
of action which the conditions call for. 
Inferences of this simple practical character are of enor- 
mous value to such creatures as monkeys. They suffice 
‘also for the greater part of our own conduct, at least in 
certain walks of life. Within the sphere of rational pro- 
cedure in ourselves there are obviously vast differences in 
the complexity and abstractness of our mental operations, 
and it might be said that the gap between the animal and the 
human mind corresponds roughly with the difference be- 
tween our more simple and our more complex and abstract 
thinking. A similar gap is bridged over during the life 
of every individual in passing from infancy to maturity, 
and we may well conceive the mind of man to have arisen 
from the animal mind by a similar process of continuous 
development. 
Father Wasmann is one of the few comparative psycholo- 
gists of note who hold the human and the animal mind to be 
fundamentally distinct. While the real basis of his opinion 
may be his adherence to the traditional theology which he 
represents, with its peculiar views as to man’s relation 
to nature, Wasmann has attempted to show that 
animals have no real intelligence, no power of abstraction, and 
no power of rational thought. Even should we grant all 
this, we should not be compelled to call into play a miracu- 
lous intervention to account for the distinctive attributes of 
human thinking. Giving names to particular mental 
faculties tends to exaggerate their distinctiveness, as was 
done in the faculty psychology of former days. When we 
say of a stage of mental evolution, here there is reason while 
at a stage just preceding, reason does not occur, our statement 
does not necessarily imply an abrupt break or sudden step 
in the evolutionary series. As Hobhouse has well remarked: 
