MENTAL POWERS. 63 



CHAPTER III. 



COMPARISON OF THE MENTAL, POWERS OP MAN AND 

 THE LOWER ANIMALS. 



The difference in mental power between the highest ape and the lowest 

 savage, immense— Certain instincts in common — The emotions- 

 Curiosity — Imitation— Attention — Memory — Imagination— Reason- 

 Progressive improvement — Tools and weapons used by animals— Ab- 

 straction, self-consciousness— Language — Sense of beauty— Belief in 

 God, spiritual agencies, superstitions. 



We have seen in the last two chapters that man bears in his 

 bodily structure clear traces of his descent from some lower 

 form; but it may be urged that, as man differs so greatly in 

 his mental power from all other animals, there must be some 

 error in this conclusion. No doubt the difference in this respect 

 is enormous, even if we compare the mind of one of the lowest 

 savages, who* has no words to express any number higher than 

 four, and who uses hardly any abstract terms for common objects 

 or for the affections,' with that of the most highly organized ape. 

 The difference would, no doubt, still remain immense, even if one 

 of the higher apes had been improved or civilized as much as 

 a dog has been in comparison with its parent-form, the wolf or 

 jackal. The Puegians rank amongst the lowest barbarians, but 

 I was continually struck with surprise how closely the three 

 natives on board H.M.S. "Beagle," who had lived some years in 

 England and could talk a little English, resembled us in disposi- 

 tion and in most of our mental faculties. If no organic being ex- 

 cepting man had possessed any mental power, or if his powers had 

 been of a wholly different nature from those of the lower animals, 

 then we should never have been able to convince ourselves that 

 our high faculties had been gradually developed. But it can be 

 shown that there is no fundamental difference 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, 



1 See the evidence on those points as given by Lubbock, 'Prehistoric 

 V'lroes,' p. 354, &c. 



