322 COSMIC PHILOSOPHY, [pt. ii. 



point at which natural selection began to confine itsi,]f chiefly 

 to variations in psychical manifestation. The ape-like pro- 

 genitor of man, in whom physical and psychical changes had 

 gone on pari passu for countless aeons, until he had reached 

 the grade of intelligence implied by the possession of a brain 

 four or five inches more capacious than that of the gorilla 

 had now, as we may suppose, obtained a brain upon which 

 could be devolved, to a greater and greater extent, the task of 

 maintaining relations with the environment. Then began a 

 new chapter in the history of the evolution of life. Hence- 

 forward the survival of the fittest, in man's immediate an- 

 cestry, was the survival of the cerebrums best able to form 

 representative combinations. The agencies which had hitherto 

 been at work in producing an organic form endowed with rare 

 physical capacities, now began steadfastly to labour in pro- 

 ducing a mind capable to a greater and greater extent of 

 ideally resuscitating and combining relations not present 

 to the senses. 



But immense as was the step thus achieved in advance, 

 the progress from brute to man was not yet accomplished. 

 As we have already shown, the circumstances which by widen- 

 ing and diversifying experience have mainly contributed to 

 heighten man's faculty of representativeness, have been for 

 the most part circumstances attendant upon man's sociality, 

 or the capacity of individuals for aggregating into communities 

 of increasing extent and complexity. Here we become 

 involved in considerations relating to the emotions as well as 

 to the intelligence. The capacity for sustaining the various 

 relationships implied by the existence of a social aggregate — 

 whether in the case of a primeval family community or of a 

 modern nation — cannot be explained without taking into 

 the account the genesis of those moral feelings by the posses- 

 sion of which man has come to differ from the highest brutes 

 even more conspicuously than by his purely intellectual 

 achievements. The task now before ua, therefore, is to 



