344 The Study of Animal Life app. 



tion of a power of a secret and supersensory nature, distinct from 

 tliat power which is everywhere present in sunbeam and rain- 

 drop, bird and flower. Then we are abandoning the theory of a 

 continuous natural evolution. Or we may mean to suggest that when 

 life and mind and man began to be, then possibilities of action and 

 reaction hitherto latent became real, and all things became in a 

 sense new. Then, while maintaining that life and mind are new 

 realities with new powers, we are still consistent believers in a con- 

 tinuous natural evolution. (4) Perhaps the simplest conception is 

 that more than once suggested in this book, that the world is one 

 not twofold, that the spiritual influx is the primal reality, that there 

 is nothing in the end which was not also in the beginning. 



(f) Prof. Calderwood has recently stated with clearness and 

 conciseness what difficulties surround the task of those who would 

 explain the evolution of man. " So far as the human organism is 

 concerned, there seem no overwhelming obstacles to be encountered 

 by an evolution theory ; but it seems impossible under such a theory 

 to account for the appearance of homo sapiens — the thinking, self- 

 regulating life, distinctively human." Again, I have no desire to 

 enter into controversy, for I recognise the difficulties which the 

 student of comparative psychology must tackle, but it seems 

 important that the following consideration should be kept in mind. 



It is not the first business of the evolutionist to find out how one 

 reality has grown out of another, but to marshal the arguments 

 which lead him to conclude that one reality has so evolved. We 

 have only a vague idea how a backbone arose, but that need not 

 hinder us from believing that backboned animals were evolved from 

 backboneless if there be sufficient evidence in favour of this con- 

 clusion. We do not know how birds arose from a reptile stock, 

 but that they did so arise is fairly certain. We cannot explain the 

 intelligence of man in terms of the activity of the brain ; we are 

 equally at a loss in regard to the intelligence of an ant. What we 

 have to do is to compare the structure of man's brain with that of 

 the nearest animals, and the nature of human intelligence with that 

 of 'the closest approximations, drawing from the results of our 

 comparison what conclusion we can. The general doctrine of 

 descent may be established independently of the investigations of 

 physiologist and psychologist, valuable as these may be in elucidat- 

 ing the way in which the great steps of progress have been made. 



(d) Finally there is the opinion of many that man is altogether 

 too marvellous a being to have arisen from any humbler form of 

 life. But to others this ascent seems the stamp of man's nobility. 



4. Ancestors of Man, — Of these we know nothing. The 

 anthropoid apes approach him most closely, each in some particular 

 respect, but none of them nor any known form of life can be called 



