Mental Evolution in Man: Origin of Human FacultyRomanes, George John
Science
Mental Evolution in Man: Origin of Human Faculty
Romanes, George John
Evolution; Psychology, Comparative
Lastly, the same remark applies to the faculties of Intellect.[5]
Enormous as the difference undoubtedly is between these faculties
in the two cases, the difference is conceded not to be one of kind
_ab initio_. On the contrary, it is conceded that up to a certain
point—namely, as far as the highest degree of intelligence to which
an animal attains—there is not merely a similarity of kind, but an
identity of correspondence. In other words, the parallel between
animal and human intelligence which is presented in my Diagram, and to
which allusion has already been made, is not disputed. The question,
therefore, only arises with reference to those superadded faculties
which are represented above the level marked 28, where the upward
growth of animal intelligence ends, and the growth of distinctively
human intelligence begins. But even at level 28 the human mind is
already in possession of many of its most useful faculties, and these
it does not afterwards shed, but carries them upwards with it in the
course of its further development—as we well know by observing the
psychogenesis of every child. Now, it belongs to the very essence of
evolution, considered as a process, that when one order of existence
passes on to higher grades of excellence, it does so upon the
foundation already laid by the previous course of its progress; so that
when compared with any allied order of existence which has not been
carried so far in this upward course, a more or less close parallel
admits of being traced between the two, up to the point at which
the one begins to distance the other, where all further comparison
admittedly ends. Therefore, upon the face of them, the facts of
comparative psychology now before us are, to say the least, strongly
suggestive of the superadded powers of the human intellect having been
due to a process of evolution.
Lest it should be thought that in this preliminary sketch of
the resemblances between human and brute psychology I have been
endeavouring to draw the lines with a biased hand, I will here quote
a short passage to show that I have not misrepresented the extent
to which agreement prevails among adherents of otherwise opposite
opinions. And for this purpose I select as spokesman a distinguished
naturalist, who is also an able psychologist, and to whom, therefore,
I shall afterwards have occasion frequently to refer, as on both these
accounts the most competent as well as the most representative of my
opponents. In his Presidential Address before the Biological Section of
the British Association in 1879, Mr. Mivart is reported to have said:—
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