360 MENTAL EVOLUTION IN MAN. 



CHAPTER XVI. 



THE TRANSITION IN THE RACE. 



At this point I shall doubtless be expected to offer some 

 remarks on the probable mode of transition between the brute 

 and the human being. Having so fully considered both the 

 psychology and philology of ideation, it may be thought 

 that I am now in a position to indicate what I suppose to 

 have been the actual stepping-stones whereby an intelligent 

 species of ape can be conceived to have crossed " the Rubicon 

 of Mind." But, if I am expected to do this, I might 

 reasonably decline, for two reasons. 



In the first place, the attempt, even if it could be successful, 

 would be superfluous. The only objection I have had to meet 

 is one which has been raised on grounds of psychology. This 

 objection I have met, and met upon its own grounds. If I 

 have been successful, for the purposes of argument nothing 

 more remains to be said. If I have not been successful, it is 

 obviously impossible to strengthen my case by going beyond 

 the known facts of mind, as they actually exist before us, to 

 any hypothetical possibilities of mind in the dim ages of an 

 unrecorded past. 



In the second place, any remarks which I have to offer 

 upon this subject must needs be of a wholly speculative or 

 unverifiable character. As well might the historian spend 

 his time in suggesting hypothetical histories of events known 

 to have occurred in a pre-historic age : his evidence that such 

 and such events must have occurred may be conclusive, and 

 yet he may be quite in the dark as to the precise conditions 



