i66 THE ASCENT OF MAN 



If abstraction, as Locke says, " is an excellency 

 which the faculties of brutes do by no means attain 

 to," we cannot on that account deny them Mind, 

 but only that height of Mind which men have, and 

 which Evolution would never look for in any living 

 thing but Man. An Evolutionist would no more 

 expect to find the higher rational characteristics in 

 a wolf or a bear than to unearth the modern turbine 

 from a Roman aqueduct. 



Though the possession even of a few rudiments 



introspective reflection in the light of self-consciousness. 

 "Wherein," he asks, "does the distinction truly consist? It 

 consists in the power which the human being displays of 

 objectifying ideas, or of setting one state of mind before an- 

 other state, and contemplating the relation between them. The 

 power to think is — or, as I should prefer to state it, the power 

 to think at all is — the power which is given by introspective 

 reflection in the light of self-consciousness. . . . We have 

 no evidence to show that any animal is capable of thus objectify- 

 ing its own ideas ; and, therefore, we have no evidence that any 

 animal is capable of judgment. Indeed, I will go further and 

 affirm that we have the best evidence which is derivable from 

 what are necessarily ejective sources, to prove that no animal 

 can possibly attain to these excellencies of subjective life." Mr. 

 Romanes proceeds to state the reason why. It is because of 

 " the absence in brutes of the needful conditions to the occur- 

 rence of those excellencies as they obtain in themselves . . . 

 the great distinction between the brute and the man really lies 

 behind the faculties both of conception and prediction ; it re- 

 sides in the conditions to the occurrence of either." — Mental 

 Evolution in Animals^ p. 175. 



