Critiques and Addresses eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 350 pages of information about Critiques and Addresses.

Critiques and Addresses eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 350 pages of information about Critiques and Addresses.

The Quarterly Reviewer and Mr. Mivart base their objections to the evolution of the mental faculties of man from those of some lower animal form, upon what they maintain to be a difference in kind between the mental and moral faculties of men and brutes; and I have endeavoured to show, by exposing the utter unsoundness of their philosophical basis, that these objections are devoid of importance.

The objections which Mr. Wallace brings forward to the doctrine of the evolution of the mental faculties of man from those of brutes by natural causes, are of a different order, and require separate consideration.

If I understand him rightly, he by no means doubts that both the bodily and the mental faculties of man have been evolved from those of some lower animal; but he is of opinion, that some agency beyond that which has been concerned in the evolution of ordinary animals, has been operative in the case of man.  “A superior intelligence has guided the development of man in a definite direction and for a special purpose, just as man guides the development of many animal and vegetable forms."[1] I understand this to mean that, just as the rock-pigeon has been produced by natural causes, while the evolution of the tumbler from the blue rock has required the special intervention of the intelligence of man, so some anthropoid form may have been evolved by variation and natural selection; but it could never have given rise to man, unless some superior intelligence had played the part of the pigeon-fancier.

[Footnote 1:  The limits of Natural Selection as applied to Man (loc. cit. p. 359).]

According to Mr. Wallace, “whether we compare the savage with the higher developments of man, or with the brutes around him, we are alike driven to the conclusion, that, in his large and well-developed brain, he possesses an organ quite disproportioned to his requirements” (p. 343); and he asks, “What is there in the life of the savage but the satisfying of the cravings of appetite in the simplest and easiest way?  What thoughts, idea, or actions are there that raise him many grades above the elephant or the ape?” (p. 342).  I answer Mr. Wallace by citing a remarkable passage which occurs in his instructive paper on “Instinct in Man and Animals.”

“Savages make long journeys in many directions, and, their whole faculties being directed to the subject, they gain a wide and accurate knowledge of the topography, not only of their own district, but of all the regions round about.  Everyone who has travelled in a new direction communicates his knowledge to those who have travelled less, and descriptions of routes and localities, and minute incidents of travel, form one of the main staples of conversation around the evening fire.  Every wanderer or captive from another tribe adds to the store of information, and, as the very existence of individuals and of whole families and tribes depends upon the completeness of this knowledge,
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Critiques and Addresses from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.