276 MENTAL LIFE OF APES AND MONKEYS 



faculty of arriving at the practical conclusion as to the kind 

 of action which the conditions call for. 



Inferences of this simple practical character are of enor- 

 mous value to such creatures as monkeys. They suffice 

 also for the greater part of our own conduct, at least in 

 certain walks of life. Within the sphere of rational pro- 

 cedure in ourselves there are obviously vast differences in 

 the complexity and abstractness of our mental operations, 

 and it might be said that the gap between the animal and the 

 human mind corresponds roughly with the difference be- 

 tween our more simple and our more complex and abstract 

 thinking. A similar gap is bridged over during the life 

 of every individual in passing from infancy to maturity, 

 and we may well conceive the mind of man to have arisen 

 from the animal mind by a similar process of continuous 

 development. 



Father Wasmann is one of the few comparative psycholo- 

 gists of note who hold the human and the animal mind to be 

 fundamentally distinct. While the real basis of his opinion 

 may be his adherence to the traditional theology which he 

 represents, with its peculiar views as to man's relation 

 to nature, Wasmann has attempted to show that 

 animals have no real intelligence, no power of abstraction, and 

 no power of rational thought. Even should we grant all 

 this, we should not be compelled to call into play a miracu- 

 lous intervention to account for the distinctive attributes of 

 human thinking. Giving names to particular mental 

 faculties tends to exaggerate their distinctiveness, as was 

 done in the faculty psychology of former days. When we 

 say of a stage of mental evolution, here there is reason while 

 at a stage just preceding, reason does not occur, our statement 

 does not necessarily imply an abrupt break or sudden step 

 in the evolutionary series. As Hobhouse has well remarked: 



