i64 THE ASCENT OF MAN 



just been referred to. Mind, in Man, does not 

 start into being fully ripe. It dawns ; it grows ; it 

 mellows ; it decays. This growing moreover is a 

 gradual growing, an infinitely gentle, never abrupt 

 unfolding — the kind of growing which in every 

 other department of Nature we are taught by 

 Nature to associate with an Evolution. If the 

 Mind of the infant had been evolved, and that not 

 from primeval Man, but from some more ancient 

 animal, it could not to more perfection have simul- 

 ated the appearance of having so come. 



But this is not all. The Mind of a child not 

 only grows, but grows in a certain order. And 

 the astonishing fact about that order is that it is 

 the probable order of evolution of mental faculty 

 as a whole. Where Science gets that probable 

 order will be referred to by and by. Meantime, 

 simply note the fact that not only in the manner 

 but in the order of its development, the human 

 Mind simulates a product of Evolution. The Mind 

 of a child, in short, is to be treated as an unfolding 

 embryo ; and just as the embryo of the body re- 

 capitulates the long life-history of all the bodies 

 that led up to it, so this subtler embryo in running 

 its course through the swift years of early infancy 

 runs up the psychic scale through which, as 

 evidence from another field will show, Mind prob- 



