92 The Recapitulation Theory and Human Infancy 



are to be found in the animal world. In accordance with these 

 homologies animals are ranked in the classification. 44 



Hobhouse here again gives expression to the pervasive idea 

 that has played so large a part in all ontogenetic study, namely, 

 that the theory of evolution implies a progressive historical 

 sequence that becomes registered in development. We now 

 know that this is not the only method in evolution. Rather, if 

 the evidence presented in the first chapter is representative, it 

 is the unusual one, the life history being so altered in the suc- 

 cessive stages in descent as to leave comparatively few evidences 

 in any one ontogeny of what took place in the phylogeny. But 

 it may be that in the case of intelligence there has been just 

 such a progression. The theoretical considerations to which 

 reference has just been made, and the degree of success which 

 has attended the work of students of mental evolution who have 

 assumed it, give a fair presumption of its actuality. The prin- 

 ciple of homologous relationships obtaining between animal 

 and childish modes of thought therefore remains as a valid 

 working hypothesis, and recapitulation may reasonably be ex- 

 pected to find illustration in this direction. What we already 

 know of the correspondence, however, forbids the acceptance of 

 Romanes' belief in a close similarity. It may be, for instance, 

 that the phylogenetic order is not so much shown through 

 chronological periods of immaturity as in the progression from 

 ignorance to conceptual or rational control at any period of 

 growth. And there is the further possibility that intelligence 

 has been adapted not only to human interests as contrasted 

 with animal interests — which is obviously the case — but to par- 

 ticular phases of psycho-physical organization, as in connection 

 with the development of skilled voluntary movements. As 

 Hobhouse suggests, we are not yet in a position to speak with 

 any confidence of the real character of the correspondence, if it 

 exists. 



This survey of the facts offered in behalf of psycho-physical 

 recapitulation is far from complete, but the more prominent 

 illustrations have been referred to, and they probably warrant 

 tentative conclusions. On examination the more striking cases 

 are found to refer not to ancestral savage conditions, but to 



« Mind in Evolution, p. 327, footnote. 



