128 THE RIDDLE OF THE UNIVERSE. 



fundamental questions of psychology. In general it 

 may be said that the process of the formation of 

 concepts, which is common to both these cerebral 

 functions, is confined to the narrower circle of con- 

 crete, proximate associations in the intellect, but 

 reaches out to the wider circle of abstract and more 

 comprehensive groups of associations in the work of 

 reason. In the long gradation which connects the 

 reflex actions and the instincts of the lower animals 

 with the reason of the highest, intellect precedes the 

 latter. And there is the fact, of great importance to 

 our whole psychological treatise, that even these 

 highest of our mental faculties are just as much 

 subject to the laws of heredity and adaptation as 

 are their respective organs ; Flechsig pointed out 

 in 1894 that the " organs of thought," in man and 

 the higher mammals, are those parts of the cortex 

 of the brain which lie between the four inner sense- 

 centres (cf. chapters x. and xi.). 



The higher grade of development of ideas, of 

 intellect and reason, which raises man so much 

 above the brute, is intimately connected with the 

 rise of language. Still here also we have to recognise 

 a long chain of evolution which stretches unbroken 

 from the lowest to the highest stages. Speech is no 

 more an exclusive prerogative of man than reason. 

 In the wider sense, it is a common feature of all the 

 higher gregarious animals, at least of all the articulata 

 and the vertebrates, which live in communities or 

 herds ; they need it for the purpose of understanding 

 each other and communicating their impressions. 

 This is effected either by touch, or by signs, or by 

 sounds having a definite meaning. The song of the 

 bird or of the anthropoid ape (hylobates), the bark 



