426 FROM BRUTE 



by his an<;estors, or consciously regulate his conduct with a view- 

 to the welfare of remote descendants, is so glaring, that we need 

 not wonder at profoundly meditative minds having been led to 

 reject with scorn the hypothesis which seeks for an explanation of 

 human Intelligence in the functions of the bodily organism common 

 to man and animals, and having had recourse to the hypothesis of 

 a spiritual agent superadded to the organism." 



" But," he adds,* "the savage is not less incompetent than the 

 animal to originate or even understand a philosophical conception; 

 the peasant would be little better than the ape, in presence of the 

 l^roblems of abstract science; and it would be hopeless to expect 

 cither of them to weigh the stars, or to understand the equations 

 of curves of double curvature. Nor are the moral conceptions of 

 the savage much higher than those of the animal. His language 

 is without terms for Justice, Sin, Crime: he has not the ideas. 

 He understands generosity, pity, and love, little better than the 

 dog or the horse does. His intelligence is mainly confined to 

 perceptions and sentiments. His aims are almost all immediate 

 and practical, rarely remote, never theoretical. The most intelli- 

 gent inhabitants of Guiana, though far removed from primitive 

 Savagery, could not believe that Humboldt had left his own 

 country and come to theirs ' to be devoured by mosquitos for the 

 sake of measuring lands which were not his own.' .... All the 

 materials of Intellect are images and symbols, all its processes are 

 operations on images and symbols. Language — which is wholly 

 a social product for a social need — is the chief vehicle of symbol- 

 ical operation, and the only means by which abstraction is etfected. 

 Without Language there can be no meditation, no theory, no 

 Thought, in the special meaning of that term." 



But as we have already hinted, concurrently with tho 

 development of Man's Intellectual Nature, there gradually 

 emerges, in response to other aspects of the same general 

 influences and conditions, what is known as his Moral 

 Nature. 



As Lewes saysf: — "Man's individual functions arrse 

 in relations to the Cosmos ; his general functions ariso 

 in relations to the Social Medium ; thence Moral Lifa 



* Loc. cit. pp. 158, 1G7. t Loc. cit. pp. 159, 173. 



