THE MONTHLY 
JOURNAL OF SCIENCE, 
FEBRUARY, 1879. 
I. “ PROGRESS,” 
THE ALLEGED DISTINCTION BETWEEN MAN AND BRUTE. 
t S man essentially progressive ? Are all other animals 
as essentially stationary ? The public opinion of these 
latter days and a number of eminent writers answer 
both these questions in the affirmative, trusting to find 
here the long-sought “ great gulf.” 
To man they ascribe a threefold movement — of the indi- 
vidual, of the community, and of the species. To brutes 
they ascribe immobility. Disregarding the charge of “ cy- 
nicism ” which may perhaps be brought against us, we 
shall examine a portion at least of these assertions. We 
shall make bold to ask whether it is really true, as so often 
asserted, that man is from the cradle to the grave a “ pro- 
gressive being,” still able and willing to learn, and to 
improve even to the very last ? Do his views as he grows 
older become continually freer and wider, his insights deeper, 
and his prejudices feebler ? The notion can scarcely be 
fairly and fully stated without revealing its utter absurdity. 
It is one of those errors which men assert in general terms, 
and yet deny daily in words as well as actions. Every ob- 
server of human nature, every man of experience, admits 
that the mind, like the body, up to a certain period increases 
in its powers, and afterwards gradually declines. Like the 
body, it becomes first less flexible, and then feebler. Figu- 
ratively speaking it is ossified. The epoch of this change 
varies not a little in different individuals. Yet in almost 
every man there comes a time when he ceases to grow men- 
tally just as he has ceased to grow corporeally — when he no 
VOL. ix. (n.s.) l 
