﻿28 Darwin, and after Darwin. 



eventual conclusion, man is to be separated from the 

 rest of organic nature, and the steady progress of 

 evolution by natural causes is to be regarded as 

 stopped at its final stage, because the human mind 

 presents the faculties of mathematical calculation and 

 aesthetic perception. Surely, on antecedent grounds 

 alone, it must be apparent that there is here no kind 

 of proportion between the conclusion and the data from 

 which it is drawn. That we are not confined to 

 any such grounds, I will now try to show. 



Let it be remembered, however, that in the following 

 brief criticism I am not concerned with the issue as 

 to whether, or how far, the " faculties " in question 

 have owed their origin or their development to 

 natural selection. I am concerned only with the 

 doctrine that in order to account for such and such 

 particular " faculty " of the human mind, some order 

 of causation must be supposed other than what we 

 call natural. I am not a Neo-Darwinist, and so 

 have no desire to make " natural selection " synonym- 

 ous with " natural causation" throughout the whole 

 domain of life and of mind. And I quite agree 

 with Mr. Wallace that, at any rate, the "aesthetic 

 faculty " cannot conceivably have been produced by 

 natural selection — seeing that it is of no conceivable 

 life-serving value in any of the stages of its growth. 

 Moreover, it appears to me that the same thing has to 

 be said of the play instincts, sense of the ludicrous, and 

 sundry other " faculties " of mind among the lower 

 animals. It being thus understood that I am not 

 differing from Mr. Wallace where he imposes "limits" 

 on the powers of natural selection, but only where he 

 seems to take for granted that this is the same thing 



