484 Animal Life and hitelligence. 



selection. To which category of neural kineses do they 

 apply — to those associated with practical results; or to 

 those associated with theoretical results (supposing these 

 to obtain below the level of man) ; or to both ? Clearly to 

 those associated with practical results. It matters not 

 what theories a lion, or an adder, or a spider hold (supposing, 

 again, that they are capable of theorizing, which I doubt). 

 Its practical activities determine whether it survives or not. 

 So, too, with men, so far as they are subject to natural 

 elimination. It matters not what may be the nature of 

 their thoughts, their aesthetic yearnings, their ideals. 

 According to their practical conduct, they are eliminated or 

 escape elimination. In other words, ehmination or natural 

 selection applies only remotely or indirectly to the human 

 race regarded as theorists, aesthetes, or interpreters of 

 nature. 



Before proceeding to indicate to what laws our theories 

 and interpretations of nature and moral ideals are subject, 

 we may note that there are sundry activities of man, the 

 outcome of his conceptual thought and emotion, which are 

 also, under the conditions of social life, to a large extent 

 beyond the pale of elimination. I refer to the aesthetic 

 activities — music, painting, sculpture, and the like ; in a 

 word, the activities associated with art, literature, and pure 

 science. These, in the main, take rank alongside the ideas 

 of which they are the outward expression. Natural selec- 

 tion, which deals with practical, life-preserving~7and life- 

 continuing activities, has little to say to them. They aro 

 neutral variations which, so far as elimination is concerned, 

 are neither advantageous nor disadvantageous, and, there- 

 fore, remain unmolested. 



We may, therefore, fully agree with Mr. Wallace, when 

 he says,* "We conclude, then, that the present gigantic 

 development of the mathematical faculty [as also of the 

 musical and artistic faculties] is wholly unexplained by the 

 theory of natural selection, and must be due to some 

 altogether distinct cause." Nay, we may go further, and 



* " Darwinism," p. 467. 



