rapidly becomes quite as indifferent to him as a motionless object. Animals soon become accustomed to the passage of railway trains: cows browse tranquilly, partridges on the brow of a hill scarcely lift their heads; and why? Because they have recognized in the locomotive an inanimate mechanism?[25] Not in the least; they observe simply that the locomotive never goes out of its way to damage them. [25] According to Mr. Spencer, the movement of a train does not appear spontaneous to animals because it is continuous; and therein lies the ground of their exemption from fright. On this reasoning, animals who live in the neighbourhood of stations should display fright at the arrival and departure of trains. Nothing of the kind is observable. They are equally incurious in regard to horses harnessed to wagons on a high-road. Speculative disinterestedness is altogether lacking in animals and savages; they live locked in the arms of sensation and desire; they spontaneously draw a circle about their ego, and whatsoever lies beyond lies beyond their intelligence. [Sidenote: Belief that all things are animate natural to animals.] This being the primitive conception of the world, we believe that the more incapable an uncivilized being is of observing and reasoning the more natural it should be for him to acquire the conviction that objects which at first struck him as indifferent are not genuinely inanimate, but are sometimes malevolent in their intentions toward him, sometimes benevolent; that they possess in effect over him a quite respectable degree of power. In other words the more intelligent an animal or a savage becomes, the more superstitious he will be, and thus by the very progress of mental evolution the primitive distinction of objects into two classes will become dim—the distinction of objects into those which are altogether indifferent and outside of the society in which one lives, and those which are more or less worthy of attention, more or less closely in practical relations with us. Mental evolution has proceeded, believe us, in precisely the opposite direction to that imagined by Mr. Spencer. [Sidenote: Motion a material sign of life in them.]