890 BEPOBT — 1893. 



•with the mechanical powers of nature would he gradually extended, and pari 

 passu with the increasing range of his knowledge there would he a corresponding 

 development in his reasoning faculties. Natural phenomena suggested reflections 

 as to their causes and eflects, and so by degrees they were brought into the cate- 

 gory of law and order. Particular sounds would be used to represent specific 

 objects, and these would become the iirst rudiments of language. Thus each 

 generalisation when added to his previous little stock of knowledge widened the 

 basis of his intellectual powers, and as the process progressed man would acquire 

 some notion of the abstract ideas of space, time, motion, force, number, &c. ; and 

 continuous thought and reasoning would ultimately become habitual to him. All 

 these mental operations could only take place through the medium of additional 

 nerve cells, and hence the brain gradually became more bulky and more complex 

 in its structure. Thus the functions of the hand and of the brain have been corre- 

 lated in a most remarlcable manner. Whether the mechanical skill of the hand 

 preceded the greater intelligence of the brain, or rice vei'sa, I will not pretend to 

 say. But between the two there must have been a constant interchange of gifts. 

 According to Sir C. Bell, ' the hand supplies all instruments, and by its corre- 

 spondence with the intellect gives him universal dominion.' ' 



That mind, in its higher psychical manifestations, has sometimes been looked 

 npon as a spiritual essence which can exist separately from its material basis need 

 not be wondered at w-hen we consider how the pleasing abstractions of the poet, or 

 the fascinating creations of the novelist, roll out, as it were, from a hidden cavern 

 without the slightest symptom of ph}'sical action. It is this marvellous power of 

 gathering and combining ideas, previously derived through the ordinary senses, 

 which gives a pnmd facie appearance of having here to deal with a force exterior 

 to the brain itself But indeed it is questionable if such psychological phenomena 

 are really represented by special organic equivalents. May they not be due rather 

 to the power of volitional reflection which summons them from the materials 

 stored up by the various localised portions into which the biain is divided ? From 

 this point of view there may be many phases of pure cerebration which, though 

 not the result of direct natural selection, have nevertheless as natural and physical 

 an origin as conscious sensation. Hence imagination, conception, idealisation, the 

 moral facidties, &c., may be compared to parasites which live at the expense of 

 their neighbours. After all the (greatest mystery of life lies in the simple acts 

 of conscious sensation, and not in the higher mental combinations into which 

 they enter. The highest products of intellectuality are nothing more than the trans- 

 formation of previously existing energy, and it is the power to utilise it that 

 alone finds its special organic equivalent in the brain. 



But this brings us on controversial ground of the highest importance. Pro- 

 fessor Huxley thus expresses his views on the phase of the .argument now at 

 issue : — 



' I have endeavoured to show that no absolute structural line of demarcation, 

 wider than that between the animals which immediately succeed us in the scale, can 

 be drawn between the animal world and ourselves ; and I may add the expression 

 of my belief that the attempt to draw a psychical distinction is equally futile, and 

 that even the highest faculties of feeling and of intellect begin to germinate in 

 lower forms of life.' ' 



On the other hand, Mr. Alfred E. Wallace, who holds such a distinguished 

 position in this special field of research, has promulgated a most remarkable theory. 

 This careful investigator, an original discoverer of the laws of natural selection, 

 and a powerful advocate of their adequacy to bring about the evolution of the 

 entire organic world, even including man up to a certain stage, believes that the 

 cosmic forces are insuflicient to account for the development of man in his civilised 

 capacity. ' Natural selection,' he writes, ' could only have endowed savage man 

 with a brain a few degrees superior to that of an ape, whereas he actually possesses 

 one very little inferior to that of a philosopher.' This deficiency in the organic 



' The Haiid, Si'c. Bridgeivater Treatise, p. 38. 

 * Evidences as to Man't Place in Nature, p. 109. 



