20 
LE CONTE. 
RELATION OF MAN TO ANIMALS. 
If my view of the mode of origin of man’s spirit be true; * 
if spirit in embryo in animals, developing through all geo¬ 
logical times, came to birth and capacity of independent 
life, and therefore immortality in man; if man alone lives 
in a new and higher spiritual, immortal world wholly un¬ 
known to animals; if the difference between the animal 
world and the distinctive human world—the phenomena of 
animal life and the distinctive phenomena of human life— 
be indeed so great, not only in degree, but also in kind,f as 
my view would make it, then surely the phenomena of this 
higher world constitutes not only a distinct department of 
thought, but by far the most distinct of all; but in these 
latter days it has become the fashion to minimize the dis¬ 
tinction between man and animals, and therefore to assimi¬ 
late, or even to identify, psychology with physiology on the 
one hand and with philosophy on the other. There can be 
no doubt that the limits of these three departments are very 
imperfectly defined in the minds of even the best thinkers. 
For some years I have striven to make them clear in my 
own mind. My object in this article is, if possible, to make 
them clear in yours. 
In an article published in the Princeton Review for May, 
„ *See the author’s book, “Evolution and its Relation to Religious 
Thought,” part III, chapter IV. 
t Many will object to this statement. It is the fashion now to say that 
the psychical difference between man and animals is a difference in de¬ 
gree only and not in kind. I wish some one would define the charac¬ 
teristics of these two kinds of differences. In pre-Darwinian times the 
distinction was plain enough. Differences of degree came in a natural 
way; differences in kind in a supernatural way. But now that evolution 
is established, it is evident that all kinds of differences come in the same 
way— Le., by a natural process of evolution. Either, therefore, there is no 
such thing as difference in kind at all or else it is only a greater degree of 
difference in degree. We call it difference in kind when the difference is 
very great or came about somewhat suddenly or else where it is without 
gradation or gradations are lost. If any difference in nature deserves the 
name of difference in kind, surely it is that between man and animals. 
