306 THE WORLD OF LIFE 



would not lead to its automatic increase under the stress of a 

 long course of development, though accompanied by continual 

 change of conditions and enormous increase in size. Hence 

 the " ridiculously small brains " (as they have been termed) 

 of these huge and varied animals. We may learn from this 

 phenomenon, and the parallel case of the huge Dinocerata 

 among the Tertiary mammals, that development of a varied 

 form and structure through the struggle for existence does not 

 necessarily lead to an increase in intelligence or in the size and 

 complexity of its organ the brain, as has been generally as- 

 sumed to be the case. 



If, as John Hunter, T. H. Huxley, and other eminent 

 thinkers have declared, '' life is the cause, not the consequence, 

 of organisation,'' so we may believe that mind is the cause, 

 not the consequence, of brain development. The first implies 

 that there is a cause of life independent of the organism 

 through which it is manifested, and this cause must itself be 

 persistent — eternal — life, any other supposition being es- 

 sentially unthinkable. And if we must posit an eternal Life 

 as the cause of life, we must equally posit an eternal Mind as 

 the cause of mind. And once accept this as the irreducible 

 minimum of a rational belief on these two great questions, 

 then the whole of the argument in this volume falls into logical 

 sequence. 



Life as a cause of organisation is as clearly manifested 

 and as much a necessity in the plant as in the animal; but 

 they are plainly different kinds (or degrees) of life. So 

 there are undoubtedly different degrees and probably also dif- 

 ferent kinds of mind in various grades of animal life. And 

 as the life-giver must be supposed to cause the due amount 

 and kind of life to flow or be dra^vn into each organism, from 

 the universe of life in which it lives, so the mind-giver, in like 

 manner, enables each class or order of animals to obtain the 

 amount of mind requisite for its place in nature, and to or- 

 ganise a brain such as is required for the manifestation of that 

 limited amount of mind and no more. 



