PRE-ANIMISM 



BY EDWARD CLODD 



AN the last page of The Origin of Species (1859) Darwin 

 ^ hinted that the theory of natural selection would throw 

 "much light on the origin of man and his history." He 

 abstained from indicating more, because, as he says in the 

 Introduction to The Descent of Man (1871), plainer speech 

 would only have added to the prejudice against his views. 

 But, in the meantime, Huxley, disregarding the counsel of 

 his friend Sir William Lawrence " not to ruin all his pros- 

 pects by so rash a venture," pushed the theory to its logical 

 issue in his Evidence as to Marts Place in Nature (1863), 

 applying it to the mind as well as to the body of man. Unity 

 and continuity are fundamental postulates of evolution, which, 

 if it operates anywhere, operates everywhere, and to admit the 

 contrary is to banish the spirit of order, and to open the door 

 to the demon of confusion. But the question has passed from 

 the speculative to the positive stage. Comparative anatomy 

 has demonstrated identity of structure between the highest 

 mammals and man ; comparative embryology has revealed 

 their common descent with modification; comparative psycho- 

 logy has shown that there is no break in the chain of mental 

 evolution ; and prehistoric archaeology has brought its " great 

 cloud of witnesses " to man's enormous antiquity and primitive 

 savagery. 



In his recent work on The Senses of Insects, Forel says 

 that " there is no possible psychology without comparative 

 psychology." 1 And, in full endorsement of this, Professor 

 Baldwin, prefacing his words with the declaration that " mind 

 runs through the universe," says that the evolution theory 

 teaches that there is " no absolute break between man and the 

 higher animals in the matter of mental endowment ; that 

 what difference there is must itself be the result of the laws 

 of mental growth ; and that the more adequate the science of 

 the human mind has become, the more evident has it also 



1 P. 287. 

 56 



