154 GENERAL EVOLUTION. 



d. Rationale of the Development of Intelligence. 



The history of material development shows that the transition 

 from stage to stage of development, experienced by the most per- 

 fect forms of animals and plants in their growth from the primor- 

 dial cell, is similar to the succession of created beings which the 

 geological epochs produced. It also shows that the slow assump- 

 tion of main characters in the line of succession in early geological 

 periods produced the condition of inferiority, while an increased 

 rapidity of growth in later days has resulted in an attainment of 

 superiority. It is not to be supposed that in ^^acceleration" the 

 period of growth is shortened ; on the contrary, it continues the 

 same. Of two beings whose characters are assumed at the same 

 rate of succession, that with the quickest or shortest growth is 

 necessarily inferior. ^^Acceleration" means a gradual increase of 

 the rate of assumption of successive characters in the same period 

 of time. A fixed rate of assumption of characters, with gradual 

 increase in the length of the period of growth, would produce the 

 same result — viz., a longer developmental scale and the attainment 

 of an advanced position. The first is in part the relation of sexes 

 of a species ; the last of genera, and of other types of creation. If 

 from an observed relation of many facts we derive a law, we are 

 permitted, when we see in another class of facts similar relations, 

 to suspect that a similar law has operated, differing only in its ob- 

 jects. We find a marked resemblance between the facts of struct- 

 ural progress in matter and the phenomena of intellectual and 

 spiritual progress. 



If the facts entering into the categories enumerated in the pre- 

 ceding section bear us out, we conclude that in the beginning of 

 human history the progress of the individual man was very slow, 

 and that but little was attained to ; that, through the profitable 

 direction of human energy, means were discovered from time to 

 time by which the process of individual development in all meta- 

 physical qualities has been accelerated ; and that up to the pres- 

 ent time the consequent advance of the whole race has been at an 

 increasing rate of progress. This is in accordance with the gen- 

 eral principle, that high development in intellectual things is 

 accomplished by rapidity in traversing the preliminary stages of 

 inferiority common to all, while low develo^oment signifies slug- 

 gishness in that progress, and a corresi^onding retention of in- 

 feriority. 



