I70 THE ASCENT OF MAN 



Shame, Remorse, and Sense of the Ludicrous after 

 fifteen. These dates, of course, do not indicate in 

 any mechanical way the birthdays of emotions ; 

 they represent rather stages in an infinitely gentle 

 mental ascent, stages nevertheless so marked that 

 we are able to give them names, and use them as 

 landmarks in psychogenesis. Yet taken even as 

 representing a rough order it is a circumstance to 

 which some significance must be attached that the 

 tree of Mind as we know it in lower Nature, and 

 the tree of Mind as we know it in a little child, 

 should be the same tree, starting its roots at the 

 same place, and though by no means ending its 

 branches at the same level, at least growing them 

 so far in a parallel direction. 



Do we read these, emotions into the lower ani- 

 mals or are they really there? That they are not 

 there in the sense in which we think them there is 

 probably certain. But that they are there in some 

 sense, a sense sufficient to permit us cautiously to 

 reason from, seems an admissible hypothesis. No 

 doubt it takes much for granted, — partly, indeed, 

 the very thing to be proved. But discounting even 

 the enormous limitations of the inquiry, there is 

 surely a residuum of general result to make it at 

 least worth making. 



If we turn from emotional to intellectual develop- 



