THE 
AMERICAN NATURALIST 
VoL. XXX. December, 1896. 360 
THE BIOLOGIC ORIGIN OF MENTAL VARIETY, 
OR 
HOW WE CAME TO HAVE MINDS: 
By HERBERT NIcHOLs. 
It is not an infrequent combination that the most familiar 
things neither excite curiosity nor are understood. Our sub- 
title suggests an instance of this kind. The naive man com- 
monly takes for granted that he sees the landscape, and hears | 
the orchestra, for no further reason than that they are there 
before him to be seen and heard. A man a degree wiser gets 
so far as to recognize that eyes, ears and a brain are necessary. 
If a biologist be asked, to-day, how we came by this appa- 
ratus, he will answer, “through evolution.” This is the max- 
imum reach of Science at present. Yet it is nearly as naive 
to conceive that we have minds, such as ours, merely because 
we have eyes, ears and a brain, as for one to imagine that he 
sees just because he has his eyes open. This becomes appar- 
ent if we consider the widely accepted doctrine that all the 
sensory currents running through the nerves to the brain are 
of the same general sort, as much so as those in electric wires 
| This paper, under the title “ ba cea oe and ra enera Aka and now somewhat 
altered from the original, was one ycho and 
its Bearings,” delivered, by the eA dap at grii Hopkins University in March, 
1896. 
67 
