1890.] The Evolution of Mind. 1011 
is exhibited. The changes of the seasons, the periodicity of the 
appearance of vegetable food, the irregular production of animal 
food, the struggle for existence between animals themselves, all 
furnish the materials of memory, and the stimuli to emotion, at- 
tention, conception, induction, and all forms of mental activity. 
By means of memory these results are cumulative ; and by reason 
of the effects of these activities on structure of the nervous 
centres the faculties themselves are augmented in power, and 
may become finally automatic, or be performed without the 
presence of consciousness. Such automatic acts or habits may 
become so fixed as to be surrendered with difficulty, or not at all, 
after changed circumstances render them no longer beneficial. 
They are termed instincts, and for a long time an essential differ- 
ence was believed to exist between Instinct and Reason. But it is 
now evident that man possesses the primitive instincts in common 
with the lower animals, and various tribes of men display especial 
characteristics which have become congenital, and may be prop- 
erly termed instincts. Such are the habits of a nomadic people, 
which they give up with great difficulty. Such is the instinct 
for the chase which persists in some men so that they move ever 
further off the frontier of a more sedentary civilization. Since itis 
known that many of the lower animals can reason, the supposed 
distinction between Instinct and Reason disappears entirely. 
^ As in structural evolution, ontogeny furnishes us with a guide 
to phylogeny. The study of the growth of the infant mind 
throws much light on its general evolution. The primitive con- 
dition of the emotions is that of appetites. The first of these in 
the necessary physiological order, and hence in time, is the appe- 
tite of hunger. Second in order in the history of life, but not in 
the growth of individuals, is the instinct of reproduction, such as 
it is in animals who only multiply by fission. Very early in evo- 
lution the emotion of fear must have arisen, and it is probably the 
immediate successor of hunger in the young of most animals. 
Anger appears as early as the mind can appreciate resistance to 
its first desires, and no doubt followed as third or fourth in the 
history of evolution. The rudiments of parental feeling would 
follow the origin of reproduction at a considerable interval of 
Amer. N: o —2. 
—November. 
