The record-union., 1898-01-25
EVOLUTION OF MIND.
HOW HUMAN FACULTIES HAVE
BEEN DEVELOPED.
Some Which Man Has in Common
With the Animals-Music
Younger Than Morals.

If man may be looked upon as the
crowning glory of creation. then those
| faculties which distinguish him from
the brute must form a most worthy
| subject of study. DR.. r. NJ. Buckle
medical superintendent of an insane
asylum in London, Ont. discussed this
subject in a fresh and Fascinating way
a few weeks ago before the British
Medical Association, then in session at
Montreal. He regards psychology as
the most interesting of all Sciences
and, being an evolutionist Qike all
scientific mem. he has been moved to
inquire in what order the various hu-
man faculties have been developed
| An investigation of this kind, DR.
Bucke insists, must include the lower
animals. He says: "As mans bodily
| life rests upon and grows from that
! of countless prehuman ancestors: as
man includes in his structure the heart
of the reptile, the gills of the fish, as
well as the forms in outline of innu-
| merable still lower races, so is his So
called human mind rooted in the senses
and instincts of all his ancestral spe-
| SiCo, dlib ilOl Oilly SD, DuL lItSt senses
and instincts still live in him, making
up, indeed, far the larger part of his
current everyday life; while his high
er psychical life is merely the out
growth and flower of them"
In the imagination of the Canadian
lecturer there exists a boundary line
about 100000 years old between the
slow development of intelligence and
| ,@+. IL
brutes, and those advances which be-
long distinctively to the human soul
The earlier of these two processes, he
thinks, may have been going on "for
millions of years"
The lowest phase of intelligence of
which any note is taken is a vague
nervous excitability After very long
time there came power of discrimina-
tion in the absorption or rejection of
food. The next. almost infinitely slow,
advance, perhaps, was capacity for
pleasure or pain. Memory and recog-
milton of offspring may have come
next; "and successfully thereafter arise
| reason, recognition of individuals and
communication of IDEAS To this pc
riod of history, DR.. Buckle is disposed
to believe belongs the branching out
of certain functions like fear surprise,
anger, affection, pride, revenge. shame,
jealousy, sympathy and playfulness.
And now the mental plane of the adult
higher animals is reached. It took mil
lions of years, according to his notion,
to get there but the human infant
passes through all these stages so
rapidly that it attains the same level
at the age of two years.
For instance" says DR.. Buckle,
memory and simple consciousness ap-
pear within few days after birth, GU
riosity ten weeks after, use of tools
twelve months after, shame, remorse
and a sense of the ludicrous-al of
them about fifteen months after birth.
Now it is to be noted that in every in
stance the time of the appearance of
a faculty in the infant corresponds
with the stage at which the same ia
Guilty appears Gas far as can be at
present ascertained) in the ascending
animal SCALE
The interval between the age Of two
and three years, in the average child,
corresponds Gn DR.. Buckles mind) with
that 10O-O00-year period which he
imagines to have existed between the
perfection of animal intelligence and
the dawn of humanity. In that long
stretch of time, he thinks, man walk
ed about in an erect position, but lack
ed what we understand by self-con-
sciousness. This trait, he says, ap-
sciousness. This trait, he says, zap
about three years; it appeared in the
race several thousand years ago" If
this argument be correct, it follows
that at the time when man first be-
gan to rise above the brutes, he did
not develop elf-consciousness until he
arrived at the fullest maturity, say at
the age of thirty-fiv where now we
reach high-water mark in intellect.
The progress of an individual man.
therefore, from the age of three to that
of thirty-five, represents that OF the
race during the several hundred thou
sand years which are supposed to
have elapsed since the race began to
separate itself from other animal life.
OF those characteristics which are ex-
hibited by man alone, the only ones be-
sides self-consciousness which DR.
Buckle considered in his recent address
were the moral sense, the color sense
and musical sense. Regarding the first
of these he says: "a careful considera-
ton Of the records which have come
down to us from the early Romans,
Hellenes. Hebrews, Egyptians, Assy-
rians and Babylonians, would indicate,
I think unmistakably, that, as we go
back into the past, this faculty tapers
down toward the vanishing point, and
that If it continues so to taper as we
ascend the ages, all of what we dis
tinctively call our moral nature would
certainly have disappeared by the time
we have gone back ten thousand years
The color sense he regards as older
than our moral nature. Tt appeared in
our ancestors, as Geiger has shown from
linguistic paleontology. in the Aryan
period probably less than thirty thou
sand years ago" On the other hand,
distinct musical faculty is regarded as
younger than our conscience, and not
over five thousand years old.
There are two or three general laws
which DIR. Buckle lays down as check
on calculations like these: The longer
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