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
In order to overturn so immense a presumption as is thus raised against
the contention of my opponents on merely _a priori_ grounds, it appears
to me that they must be fairly called upon to supply some very powerful
considerations of an _a posteriori_ kind, tending to show that there
is something in the constitution of the human mind which renders it
virtually impossible to suppose that such an order of mental existence
can have proceeded by way of genetic descent from mind of lower orders.
I therefore next proceeded to consider the arguments which have been
adduced in support of this thesis.
In order that the points of difference on which these arguments are
founded might be brought out into clear relief, I began by briefly
considering the points of resemblance between the human mind and
mind of lower orders. Here we saw that so far as the Emotions are
concerned no difference of kind has been, or can be, alleged. The
whole series of human emotions have been proved to obtain among the
lower animals, except those which depend on the higher intellectual
powers of man—_i.e._ those appertaining to religion and perception
of the sublime. But all the others—which in my list amount to over
twenty—occur in the brute creation; and although many of them do
not occur in so highly developed a degree, this is immaterial where
the question is one of kind. Indeed, so remarkable is the general
similarity of emotional life in both cases—especially when we have
regard to the young child and savage man—that it ought fairly to be
taken as direct evidence of a genetic continuity between them.
And so, likewise, it is with Instinct. For although this occurs in a
greater proportion among the lower animals than it does in ourselves,
no one can venture to question the identity of all the instincts which
are common to both. And this is the only point that here requires to be
established.
Again, with respect to the Will, no argument can arise touching the
identity of animal and human volition up to the point where the latter
is alleged to take on the attribute of freedom—which, as we saw, under
any view depends on the intellectual powers of introspective thought.
There remain, then, only these intellectual powers of introspective
Thought, _plus_ the faculties of Morality and Religion. Now, it is
evident that, whatever we may severally conclude as touching the
distinctive value of the two latter, we must all agree that a prime
condition to the possibility of either resides in the former: without
the powers of intellect which are competent to frame the abstract
ideation that is concerned both in morals and religion, it is manifest
that neither could exist. Therefore, in logical order, it is these
powers of intellect that first fall to be considered. In subsequent
parts of this work I shall fully deal both with morals and religion: in
the present part I am concerned only with the intellect.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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