132 COSMIC PHILOSOPHY. [pt. ii. 



intelligence. Others — as the simplest inferences, several 

 complex perceptions, and all the most simple ones — are 

 shared by all human intelligence with the intelligence of 

 apes, dogs, horses, and indeed of the majority of mammals, 

 many birds, and jDossibly some lower animals. Others, again 

 — as the simplest perceptive acts implied in recognizing a 

 sensation — must be shared with all those animals whose 

 nervous system is sufficiently comj^lex to allow of their 

 having any consciousness whatever. While others, finally 

 — as the simplest sub-conscious groupings of primitive 

 psychical shocks — must be shared by humanity with all 

 those forms of animal existence which possess any nervous 

 structure whatever. For instance, that reflex action which 

 occurs when the foot of a sleeping person, casually moved 

 into a cold part of the bed, is quickly withdrawn without 

 arousing any state of consciousness, involves the activity of 

 a fragment of the human nervous system which corresponds 

 in general structure to the entire nervous system of a medusa 

 or jelly-fish. In such lowly creatures, then, we must sup- 

 pose that the psychical actions which go on are similar to 

 our own sub-conscious psychical actions. And, clearly, if 

 we could trace the slow increments by which the nervous 

 system has grown in heterogeneity, definiteness, and co- 

 herence, during the countless ages which have witnessed the 

 progress from the primeval marine vertebrate to the civilized 

 modern man, we should also be able to trace the myriad 

 stages of the composition of mind, from the reflex contrac- 

 tions of a rudimentary fin, up to the generalizations of an 

 Aristotle or a Newton. 



