360 PSYCHOLOGY. 



sible error was the same. The brute will, therefore, stop 

 short of dissociating the general notion of error per se, and 

 a fortiori will never attain the conception of Thought itself 

 as such. 



We may then, we think, consider it proven that the most 

 elementary single dij^erence hetiveen the human mind and that of 

 brutes lies in this deficiency on the brute's part to associate ideas 

 by similarity — characters, the abstraction of which depends 

 on this sort of association, must in the brute always remain 

 drowned, swamped in the total phenomenon which they 

 help constitute, and never used to reason from. If a char- 

 acter stands out alone, it is always some obvious sensible 

 quality like a sound or a smell which is instinctively excit- 

 ing and lies in the line of the animal's propensities ; or it 

 is some obvious sign which experience has habitually 

 coupled with a consequence, such as, for the dog, the sight 

 of his master's hat on and the master's going out. 



DIFFERENT ORDERS OF HUMAN GENIUS. 



But, now, since nature never makes a jump, it is evident 

 that we should find the lowest men occupying in this respect 

 an intermediate position between the brutes and the highest 

 men. And so we do. Beyond the analogies which their own 

 minds suggest by breaking up the literal sequence of their 

 experience, there is a whole world of analogies which they 

 can appreciate when imparted to them by their betters, but 

 which they could never excogitate alone. This answers 

 the question Avhy Darwin and Newton had to be waited for 

 so long. The flash of similarity between an apple and the 

 moon, between the rivalry for food in nature and the rivalry 

 for man's selection, was too recondite to have occurred to any 

 but exceptional minds. Genius, then, as has been already 

 said, is identical loith the possession of similar association 

 to an extreme degree. Professor Bain says : " This I count 

 the leading fact of genius. I consider it quite impossible 

 to afford any explanation of intellectual originality except 

 on the supposition of unusual energy on this point." Alike 

 in the arts, in literature, in practical affairs, and in science, 

 association by similarity is the prime condition of success. 



