TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION H. 973 
the most primitive tests, viz., contact, odour, and flavour. Failure to meet these 
would mean destruction to the idea, which could not long be supported merely by 
the evidence of dreams and hallucinations, inevitably conflicting. And yet these 
ideas, which seem scarcely to be a natural ‘stage in an orderly and continuous 
development of mental power, are the concomitants of a brain growth which 
certainly ts both orderly and continuous. 
Reasoning from the analogy of evolution generally, we should surely have 
expected that the human mind would have been first matter-of-fact and practical, 
then imaginative, that is, pictorial, image-producing. But the ghost-theory tends 
to ignore the practical stage, to turn orderly imagination into desultory and 
riotous fancy—which is at once stereotyped in persistent and often harmful prac- 
tice—and to restrict the accurate to modern times. But this is at variance 
with at least some recent discoveries (e.g., the drawings of the Cro-Magnon cave- 
men). 
Finally, why should the cult of the living, which had been the very condition 
of all organic advance, give place to such a monstrous paradox as the cult of the 
dead? 
We are left with two alternatives. 
(1) To suppose an absolute break and reversal in the evolution of mind, 
wherein a permanently distorted picture of the universe is created, and the real and 
significant suddenly abdicates in favour of the baseless and unmeaning. 
(2) To ask whether there is some reality answering to these crude conceptions, 
which thus form part ofa continuous mental development, and may be described. 
as faulty translation, rendered inevitable by the scantiness of primitive means of 
analysis and expression. 
To adopt the first alternative is to strike a blow at the doctrine of continuous 
ascent in evolution. To adopt the second might lead us to conclude that what we- 
want is a greater power of interpreting primitive ideas as expressed in myth and 
ritual, notably in relation to recent developments and present researches in 
psychology itself, and the psychological aspects of language. 
5. On Reversion. By Miss Nina F. Layarp, 
In considering the subject of linear evolution the great’ importance of a clear 
understanding of the laws of reversion is apparent, for if it can positively be 
proved that structures common to lower groups occasionally make their appear- 
ance in man through this means, a strong point has been gained. It is logically 
certain that there cannot be a return to a state which has not once existed. 
But if, on the other hand, such appearances can be traced to an arrest during 
the process of development, or to sport, the phenomenon shows no connection 
between higher and lower groups. The opening sentence in Darwin’s remarks 
on reversion in ‘The Descent of Man’ appears to take all force from the 
argument which follows. He says :—‘ Many of the cases here given might have 
been introduced under the heading “ Arrests of Development.”’ 
If we carefully divide positive cases of arrest of development and sports from 
those which may be, strictly speaking, considered to have the true appearances of 
reversion, the number diminishes enormously. Microcephalous idiots undoubtedly 
belong to the former class, likewise the persistence of the divided malar-bone in 
some adults, and in all probability cases in eo the mature uterus is furnished 
with cornua. 
The occasional occurrence of gupernumerary mamme, also of polydactylism, 
were both practically withdrawn by Darwin from his list of reversions. 
Perhaps the most important point to be ascertained is as to the limit of time 
after which reversion to an earlier type becomes impossible. If there be no limit, 
then it may be a matter of surprise that reversion is not more constant in man. 
‘The proportion of blood of any one ancestor,’ we are told, ‘after twelve genera- 
tions is only 1 in 2,048,’ and yet a tendency to reversion is retained; but if in 
our veins there is a proportion of early ancestral blood, so considerable as to render 
