49^ Animal Life and Intelligence. 



spiritual part. And thus the whole world might be peopled 

 with living existences of the spiritual order. 



Now, whether the fetishistic faith arose in some such 

 way as this or not — and we can never know how it arose, 

 but can only guess — there would be nothing in such primi- 

 tive explanations which would violate the law of congruity. 

 They would have, therefore, a perfectly natural genesis. 

 The attempted interpolation at such a stage of primitive 

 reason of any modern scientific conception would be futile. 

 It would at once be rejected through incongruity. 



The history of scientific conceptions seems to show that 

 they were first adopted with regard to phenomena on the 

 very horizon of thought — -in regions, that is to say, most 

 remote from the central citadel of the soul. Only gradually 

 have they, little by little, encroached upon this centre ; and 

 the application of them to physiology and psychology is a 

 matter of quite modern times. Even to-day only a minority, 

 but an increasing minority, of thinkers are prepared in- 

 dissolubly to unite the mind and body, so long divorced in 

 thought, so completely united, as many of us believe, in 

 their essential being. 



I have now, I trust, illustrated at sufficient length the 

 principle of elimination through incongruity in interneural 

 and its associated metakinetic or mental evolution. This, 

 however, like natural selection, is a matter of guidance ; 

 we have still to consider the question of origin. 



In truth, we know too little on the subject to enable us 

 to discuss it with much profit. From the kinetic or 

 organic point of view, neural variations take their place 

 among the other variations, the origin of which, as we have 

 already found, is so hard to account for. There may be a 

 tendency for neural vibrations to mutually influence each 

 other (like two clocks placed side by side), and thus 

 gradually to drag each other into one harmonious and 

 congruous rhythm. But this, though not improbable, is 

 purely hypothetical. There is the hypothesis of the in- 

 heritance of acquired variations, the increased congruity 

 acquired by the parent being in some degree transmitted 



