In point of fact, then, there is obviously no escape from the conclusion that in the race, as in the individual, the development of true, or “inward,” from receptual, or “outward,” self-consciousness was a gradual process; that its birth in the former is not merely a matter of inference—overpowering though this inference be,—but a matter of actual fact which is recorded in the archives of Language itself; and, therefore, that the central question upon which the whole of the present treatise has been engaged cannot any longer be regarded as an open question. It has been closed, part by part, as the witness of philology has verified, stage by stage, the results of our psychological analysis; and now, eventually, the verification has extended to the central core of the matter, revealing in all its naked simplicity the one decisive fact, that in the childhood of the world, no less than in that of the man, we may see the fundamental change from sense to thought: in the one as in the other do we behold that— “As he grows he gathers much, And learns the use of ‘I,’ and ‘me,’ And finds ‘I am not what I see, And other than the things I touch.’ “So rounds he to a separate mind From whence clear memory may begin, As thro’ the frame that binds him in His isolation grows defined.” CHAPTER XVII. GENERAL SUMMARY AND CONCLUDING REMARKS. In the present treatise I take as granted the general theory of evolution, so far as it is now accepted by the vast majority of naturalists. That is to say, I assume the doctrine of descent as regards the whole of organic nature, morphological and psychological, with the one exception of man. Moreover, I assume this doctrine even in the case of man, so far as his bodily organization is concerned; it being thus only with reference to the human mind that the exception to which I have alluded is made. And I make this exception in deference to the opinion of that small minority of evolutionists who still maintain that, notwithstanding their acceptance of the theory of descent as regards the corporeal constitution of man, they are able to adduce cogent evidence to prove that the theory fails to account for his mental constitution.