A SUMMARY OF THE LAST TWO CHAPTERS.
There can be no doubt that the difference between the mind of the
lowest man and that of the highest animal is immense. An
anthropomorphous ape, if he could take a dispassionate view of his own
case, would admit that though he could form an artful plan to plunder a
garden though he could use stones for fighting or for breaking open
nuts, yet that the thought of fashioning a stone into a tool was quite
beyond his scope. Still less, as he would admit, could he follow out a
train of metaphysical reasoning, or solve a mathematical problem, or
reflect on God, or admire a grand natural scene. Some apes, however,
would probably declare that they could and did admire the beauty of the
coloured skin and fur of their partners in marriage. They would admit,
that though they could make other apes understand by cries some of
their perceptions and simpler wants, the notion of expressing definite
ideas by definite sounds had never crossed their minds. They might
insist that they were ready to aid their fellow-apes of the same troop
in many ways, to risk their lives for them, and to take charge of their
orphans; but they would be forced to acknowledge that disinterested
love for all living creatures, the most noble attribute of man, was
quite beyond their comprehension.
Nevertheless the difference in mind between man and the higher animals,
great as it is, certainly is one of degree and not of kind. We have
seen that the senses and intuitions, the various emotions and
faculties, such as love, memory, attention, curiosity, imitation,
reason, etc., of which man boasts, may be found in an incipient, or
even sometimes in a well-developed condition, in the lower animals.
They are also capable of some inherited improvement, as we see in the
domestic dog compared with the wolf or jackal. If it could be proved
that certain high mental powers, such as the formation of general
concepts, self-consciousness, etc., were absolutely peculiar to man,
which seems extremely doubtful, it is not improbable that these
qualities are merely the incidental results of other highly-advanced
intellectual faculties; and these again mainly the result of the
continued use of a perfect language. At what age does the new-born
infant possess the power of abstraction, or become self-conscious, and
reflect on its own existence? We cannot answer; nor can we answer in
regard to the ascending organic scale. The half-art, half-instinct of
language still bears the stamp of its gradual evolution. The ennobling
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