4^8 METAPHYSICAL EVOLUTION. 



the first movement was doubtless a mere discliarge of force ; but 

 the first designed action, the appropriation of food, was due to a 

 sense of want or hunger, which is a form of pain. This was fol- 

 lowed by gratification, a pleasure, the memory of which consti- 

 tuted a motive for a more evidently designed act, viz. : pursuit. 



These two mental states, the one painful, the other pleasurable, 

 form the basis in the feelings of all appetent acts. The painful 

 sense of want is the motive to the performance of the jDrimary 

 class of actions, and the experience of pleasurable gratification fur- 

 nishes the motive for a class which must be regarded as secondary. 



The primary organized feelings of animals are not numerous. 



In man, the most highly developed. Prof. Bain enumerates * 

 only eleven types, and some of these he states may be further re- 

 solved. From the stand-point of the evolutionist this is evidently 

 necessary, and a corresponding reduction in number can be made. 

 The develoiDment of the feelings has proceeded from the early be- 

 ginnings above described, in subsequent ages, pari passu with that 

 of the intellect. It is necessary in the nature of things that it 

 should be so, since the finer and fuller the sensibility to pleasures 

 and pains in all directions, the greater will be the complexity of 

 experience, and hence of intelligence. It is not practicable to 

 trace the history of the feelings here, but I allude briefly to one 

 class of them — the social affections — as they have been treated by 

 Herbert Spencer, whose contributions to this department of 

 knowledge have been very important. 



This author maintains that the social affections are the product, 

 in the department of mind, of the function of reproduction. 

 They are the organized products of experiences of pleasures de- 

 rived from fellow beings, just as other kinds of likes and dislikes 

 are derived from experiences of the qualities of various objects. 

 It is sufficiently evident that this faculty must survive, and the 

 social instincts become more and more refined or specialized. It 

 is a remarkable fact in the successional relations, and hence evo- 

 lution, of the vertehrata, that the only system that has accompa- 

 nied the nervous in its progress from generalization to specializa- 

 tion and perfection, is the reproductive. Man, standing at the 

 head of the series by his develojDcd brain, possesses also the most 

 specialized reproductive system. He is inferior to many other 

 Mammalia in his osseous and muscular type, and in his digestive 



* " The Emotions and the Will," p. 36. 



