Lord Monboddo, A Precursor of the Darwins. 49 
ence, and who is Mortal.” (IY, p. 14.) His conception of mental 
eVdlutidn is the history of this “Comparative faculty.” 
Knowledge begins with corporeal objects, or the objects of sense, and 
the first operation of the mind is the comparison of these objects; by 
which comparison man, like other animals, finds some objects more 
acceptable than others, and chooses them, being guided either by his 
senses or by the instinct which prompts him to choose what is fittest 
for the preservation of the individual and of the species. The second 
' and third mental operations, which are also exercises of the comparative 
faculty, and also common to man and to the brute, are the perception 
that several qualities, as perceived by the several senses, are joined in 
one object, and the recognition of an object upon seeing it for the sec- 
ond time. Further than this the animal mind, it seems, can not go; 
the road parts between man and brute, and we follow the processes of 
the purely human intellect. 
By comparing the thing with itself, man discovers the principal or 
characteristic qualities of an object, abstracting and separating these 
from its other qualities, and thus forming the particular idea of the 
thing under observation. A generalization of ideas follows. “We dis- 
cover that the one which we have found in one individual is to be found 
in many. And thus we form the idea of a species, then of a genus, and 
so on. * * * We still use * * * Generalization and Abstraction; 
for we must both generalize the species, and abstract from it the specific 
differences in order to form the idea of a genus.” (IY, p. 17.) 
“I think I have shown,” Monboddo summarizes, “that both intellect 
and science are derived from that faculty of comparison, which Aristotle 
has made the first thing .in the Definition of Man, and which, by our 
having the capacity to carry it further than the brute, makes us Intelli- 
gent and Scientific creatures. * * * In this state of our existence, 
we know not the essence of anything. * * * What we know, there- 
fore, is all in system, which is constituted by the relations and connec- 
tions of things to one another. And thus, by ascending from lesser to 
greater systems, we may come at length to the contemplation of the 
system of the Universe and its great Author, which, to the intellectual 
mind, is the beatific vision. And here we may observe the order and 
regularity of that system, by which man is connected with the brute, 
and how he begins where the brute ends, that is, with comparing an 
object of sense with itself, so as to discover what is principal and pre- 
dominant in it. So that there is here, as well as in other parts of 
nature, a chain' where no link is wanting, and where everything is con- 
nected with everything.” (Antient Metaphysics, Yol. IY, pp. 18-19.) 
It seems never to have occurred to Lord Monboddo to wonder why 
the Author of the Universe should have troubled Himself to create 
