FIFTH day's sitting. 95 



that our high faculties had been gradually developed. But 

 it can be clearly shown that there is no fundamental 

 difierence of this kind. We must also admit that there is 

 a much wider interval, in mental power, between one of the 

 lowest fishes, as a lamprey or lancelet, and one of the 

 higher apes, than between an ap3 and a man ; yet this 

 immense interval is filled up by numberless gradations." 

 (Vol. i. pp. 34, 35.) 



Homo. The lamprey, or stone-sucker, my Lord, is a kind 

 of eel which attaches itself by the mouth to stones or rocks, 

 to prevent the tide or current from carrying it away. This 

 I hold to be a very sensible operation on its part, and one 

 that man himself, in a similar difficulty, might perform 

 •with advantage. The lancelet is a similar kind of fish, 

 smaller in size. These creatures have just the amount of 

 instinct, or "mental power" — if Mr. Darwin prefers calling 

 it so — which they require. Perhaps, if Mr. Darwin were to 

 take some pains with a lamprey, he might, to some extent, 

 succeed in improving, or even in civilizing it — which is 

 more than he can do with an ape ; but he would be unable 

 to teach either the one or other to talk English, or count 

 four, or understand an abstract term; nor could he bring 

 them to resemble us in disposition and mental faculty. This 

 of itself is sufficient to prove that the interval, in mental 

 power, between either of them and man, is practically 

 infinite. It is the merest folly, then, to compare them with 

 man. But this is only another of the follies to which Mr. 

 Darwin is driven by the stress of his argument. 



Lord C. Mr. Darwin says that " there is no fundamental 

 difference," in mental faculty, between man and the lower 

 animals. Does he explain what he means by a "funda- 

 mental difference ? " — what, in his view, would constitute 

 such a difference ? 



