1892.] Mental Evolution in Man and Lower Animals. 483 



In the child, we find at the beginning of life a mental con- 

 dition as low as that of a blind puppy or a kitten, showing 

 two instincts only, 1 of which one has but lately been revealed ; 

 and no glimmerings, for many months, of reason. From this 

 humble beginning, to the highest point which human faculties 

 can reach, there is no break ; no point at which we can say 

 "here mind exists, where yesterday it was not." Not only is 

 the growth of the human mind gradual, but during its earlier 

 phases of development it assuredly ascends " through a seal.' 

 " of mental faculties parallel with those permanently presented 

 "by the lower animals, whilst with regard to the emotions the 

 " area these cover in the lower animals is nearly co-ex tensive 

 " with that covered by the emotional faculties of man.-'" Tie 

 purely human emotions may indeed be limited to religion and 

 the sense of the sublime. 



And if from the history of the individual, we turn to all we 

 know of the history of the race, the evidence of a gradual 

 evolution of mental faculties is the same; from the rough flint 

 weapons of the drift period, to the era of polished stone : from 

 polished stone to bronze; from bronze to iron; from the 

 fetich of shapeless wood stuck with feathers, and the merciless 

 nature-gods, which men saw in sunshine and storm, m femine 

 and in pestilence, to the Brahma of the Vedas and the God of 

 Isaiah ; from the rude sticks covered by skins of animals and 



shelters of rough piled i 



houses of wood and hewn 



stone, and thence to such conceptions as are embodied in the 

 Parthenon, or in the Cathedrals of the middle ages we have 

 similar evidences of evolution. And whatever point ot view 

 we take we see progress starting from the humblest .beginnings ; 

 no matter how towering the building, its foundations are laid 

 deep in the earth. . „, . 



It has been alleged that this very progress m human anair, 

 draws a shape line of demarcation between men and animate; 

 that whereas in man a constant improvement goes on, no -si n 

 of progress can be found in brutes. This argument is weak 



iThe instinct, pointing surely to an arboreal ancestry, by which a new born infant 



