Chap, III. 
SUMMARY. 
105 
yet that the thought of fashioning a stone into a tool 
was quite beyond his scope. Still less, as he would 
admit, could he follow out a train of metaphysical 
reasoning, or solve a mathematical problem, or reflect 
on God, or admire a grand natural scene. Some apes, 
however, would probably declare that they could and 
did admire the beauty of the coloured skin and fur of 
their partners in marriage. They would admit, that 
though they could make other apes understand by cries 
some of their perceptions and simpler wants, the notion 
of expressing definite ideas by definite sounds had 
never crossed their minds. They might insist that they 
were ready to aid their fellow-apes of the same troop in 
many ways, to risk their lives for them, and to take 
charge of their orphans ; but they would be forced to 
acknowledge that disinterested love for all living crea- 
tures, the most noble attribute of man, was quite be- 
yond their comprehension. 
Nevertheless the difference in mind between man 
and the higher animals, great as it is, is certainly one 
of degree and not of kind. We have seen that the 
senses and intuitions, the various emotions and faculties, 
such as love, memory, attention, curiosity, imitation, 
reason, &c., of which man boasts, may be found in an 
incipient, or even sometimes in a well-developed con- 
dition, in the lower animals. They are also capable of 
some inherited improvement, as we see in the domestic 
dog compared with the wolf or jackal. If it be main- 
tained that certain powers, such as self-consciousness, 
abstraction, &c., are peculiar to man, it may well be 
that these are the incidental results of other highly- 
advanced intellectual faculties; and these again are 
mainly the result of the continued use of a highly 
developed language. At what age does the new-born 
infant possess the power of abstraction, or become self- 
