I02 EVIDENCES AND LIMITATIONS 



natural selection upon them. These stages are the 

 transitions respectively from the inorganic to the organic, 

 from the non-intelligent to the sensitive and conscious, 

 and from unreflective animal intelligence to the self- 

 conscious, abstract, moral, and religious reason and 

 aspirations of mankind.^ Enlarging his conclusion, we 

 maintain that the origin of life, of animal intelligence 

 and instinct, and of man's distinctive mental, moral, 

 and religious faculties, constitute superphysical changes 

 which no theory of purely physical evolution can 

 account for or explain. 



3. In particular, the differences between human and 

 brute intelligence are differences in kind, and consti- 

 tute a gap which, from the nature of things, cannot be 

 crossed by purely natural evolution. There is no need 

 to dwell at length upon this. A bare list of the chief 

 differences observable is sufficient to convince those 

 who are not hopelessly entangled in the mire of natural- 

 ism. Animals possess perceptive and concrete reason, 

 sometimes to a high degree — especially under domesti- 

 cation. But man alone is able to generalize, to engage 

 in abstract thought, to acquire opinions, to express his 

 thoughts, opinions, and knowledge in conceptual 

 terms, and to hand on the results of mental progress to 

 posterity. Many animals possess consciousness; but 

 man alone reflects, and attains to self -consciousness.^ 



1 Op. cit., pp. 474-476. 



2 H. Calderwood, Evolution, chh. vii, viii. Thos. Huxley denied 

 that the differenee between human and brute intelligence is one of 

 kind, Darwiniana, pp. 152-179. John Fiske acknowledges that 

 the psychological divergence of man from brute requires us to 



