Mental Evolution in Man: Origin of Human Faculty

by George John Romanes

Again, the theological distinction between men and animals may be passed over, because it rests on a dogma with which the science of psychology has no legitimate point of contact. Whether or not the conscious part of man differs from the conscious part of animals in being immortal, and whether or not the “spirit” of man differs from the “soul” of animals in other particulars of kind, dogma itself would maintain that science has no voice in either affirming or denying. For, from the nature of the case, any information of a positive kind relating to these matters can only be expected to come by way of a Revelation; and, therefore, however widely dogma and science may differ on other points, they are at least agreed upon this one—namely, if the conscious life of man differs thus from the conscious life of brutes, Christianity and Philosophy alike proclaim that only by a Gospel could its endowment of immortality have been brought to light.[8]

Another distinction between the man and the brute which we often find asserted is, that the latter shows no signs of mental progress in successive generations. On this alleged distinction I may remark, first of all, that it begs the whole question of mental evolution in animals, and, therefore, is directly opposed to the whole body of facts presented in my work upon this subject. In the next place, I may remark that the alleged distinction comes with an ill grace from opponents of evolution, seeing that it depends upon a recognition of the principles of evolution in the history of mankind. But, leaving aside these considerations, I meet the alleged distinction with a plain denial of both the statements of fact on which it rests. That is to say, I deny on the one hand that mental progress from generation to generation is an invariable peculiarity of human intelligence; and, on the other hand, I deny that such progress is never found to occur in the case of animal intelligence.

Taking these two points separately, I hold it to be a statement opposed to fact to say, or to imply, that all existing savages, when not brought into contact with civilized man, undergo intellectual development from generation to generation. On the contrary, one of the most generally applicable statements we can make with reference to the psychology of uncivilized man is that it shows, in a remarkable degree, what we may term a vis inertiæ as regards upward movement. Even so highly developed a type of mind as that of the Negro—submitted, too, as it has been in millions of individual cases to close contact with minds of the most progressive type, and enjoying as it has in many thousands of individual cases all the advantages of liberal education—has never, so far as I can ascertain, executed one single stroke of original work in any single department of intellectual activity.

Again, if we look to the whole history of man upon this planet as recorded by his remains, the feature which to my mind stands out in most marked prominence is the almost incredible slowness of his intellectual advance, during all the earlier millenniums of his existence. Allowing full weight to the consideration that “the Palæolithic age, referring as the phrase does to a stage of culture, and not to any chronological period, is something which has come and gone at very different dates in different parts of the world;”[9] and that the same remark may be taken, in perhaps a smaller measure, to apply to the Neolithic age; still, when we remember what enormous lapses of time these ages may be roughly taken to represent, I think it is a most remarkable fact that, during the many thousands of years occupied by the former, the human mind should have practically made no advance upon its primitive methods of chipping flints; or that during the time occupied by the latter, this same mind should have been so slow in arriving, for example, at even so simple an invention as that of substituting horns for flints in the manufacture of weapons. In my next volume, where I shall have to deal especially with the evidence of intellectual evolution, I shall have to give many instances, all tending to show its extraordinarily slow progress during these æons of pre-historic time. Indeed, it was not until the great step had been made of substituting metals for both stones and horns, that mental evolution began to proceed at anything like a measurable rate. Yet this was, as it were, but a matter of yesterday. So that, upon the whole, if we have regard to the human species generally—whether over the surface of the earth at the present time, or in the records of geological history,—we can no longer maintain that a tendency to improvement in successive generations is here a leading characteristic. On the contrary, any improvement of so rapid and continuous a kind as that which is really contemplated, is characteristic only of a small division of the human race during the last few hours, as it were, of its existence.

On the other hand, as I have said, it is not true that animal species never display any traces of intellectual improvement from generation to generation. Were this the case, as already remarked, mental evolution could never have taken place in the brute creation, and so the phenomena of mind would have been wholly restricted to man: all animals would have required to present but a vegetative form of life. But, apart from this general consideration, we meet with many particular instances of mental improvement in successive generations of animals, taking place even within the limited periods over which human observations can extend. In my previous work numerous cases will be found (especially in the chapters on the plasticity and blended origin of instincts), showing that it is quite a usual thing for birds and mammals to change even the most strongly inherited of their instinctive habits, in order to improve the conditions of their life in relation to some change which has taken place in their environments. And if it should be said that in such a case “the animal still does not rise above the level of birdhood or of beasthood,” the answer, of course, is, that neither does a Shakespeare or a Newton rise above the level of manhood.

On the whole, then, I cannot see that there is any valid distinction to be drawn between human and brute psychology with respect to improvement from generation to generation. Indeed, I should deem it almost more philosophical in any opponent of the theory of evolution, who happened to be acquainted with the facts bearing upon the subject, if he were to adopt the converse position, and argue that for the purposes of this theory there is not a sufficient distinction between human and brute psychology in this respect. For when we remember the great advance which, according to the theory of evolution, the mind of palæolithic man must already have made upon that of the higher apes, and when we remember that all races of existing men have the immense advantage of some form of language whereby to transmit to progeny the results of individual experience,—when we remember these things, the difficulty appears to me to lie on the side of explaining why, with such a start and with such advantages, the human species, both when it first appears upon the pages of geological history, and as it now appears in the great majority of its constituent races, should so far resemble animal species in the prolonged stagnation of its intellectual life.

I shall now pass on to consider the views of Mr. Wallace and Mr. Mivart on the distinction between the mental endowments of man and of brute. Both these authors are skilled naturalists, and also professed evolutionists so far as the animal world is concerned: moreover, they further agree in maintaining that the principles of evolution cannot be held to apply to man. But it is curious that, so far as psychology is concerned, they base their arguments in support of their common conclusion on precisely opposite premisses. For while Mr. Mivart argues that human intelligence cannot be the same in kind as animal intelligence, because the mind of the lowest savage is incomparably superior to that of the highest ape; Mr. Wallace argues for the same conclusion on the ground that the intelligence of savages is so little removed from that of the higher apes, that the fact of their brains being proportionately larger must be held to point prospectively towards the needs of civilized life. “A brain,” he says, “slightly larger than that of the gorilla would, according to the evidence before us, fully have sufficed for the limited mental development of the savage; and we must therefore admit that the large brain he actually possesses could never have been developed solely by any of the laws of evolution.”[10]

Now, I have presented these two opinions side by side because I deem it an interesting, if not a suggestive circumstance, that the two leading dissenters in this country from the general school of evolutionists, although both holding the doctrine that man ought to be separated from the rest of the animal kingdom on psychological grounds, are nevertheless led to their common doctrine by directly opposite reasons.

The eminent French naturalist, Professor Quatrefages, also adopts the opinion that man should be separated from the rest of the animal kingdom as a being who, on psychological grounds, must be held to have had some different mode of origin. But he differs from both the English evolutionists in drawing his distinction somewhat more finely. For while Mivart and Wallace found their arguments upon the mind of man considered as a whole, Quatrefages expressly limits his ground to the faculties of conscience and religion. In other words, he allows—nay insists—that no valid distinction between man and brute can be drawn in respect of rationality or intellect. For instance, to take only one passage from his writings, he remarks:—“In the name of philosophy and psychology, I shall be accused of confounding certain intellectual attributes of the human reason with the exclusively sensitive faculties of animals. I shall presently endeavour to answer this criticism from the standpoint which should never be quitted by the naturalist, that, namely, of experiment and observation. I shall here confine myself to saying that, in my opinion, the animal is intelligent, and, although an (intellectually) rudimentary being, that its intelligence is nevertheless of the same nature as that of man.” Later on he says:—“Psychologists attribute religion and morality to the reason, and make the latter an attribute of man (to the exclusion of animals). But with the reason they connect the highest phenomena of the intelligence. In my opinion, in so doing they confound, and refer to a common origin, facts entirely different. Thus, since they are unable to recognize either morality or religion in animals, which in reality do not possess these two faculties, they are forced to refuse them intelligence also, although the same animals, in my opinion, give decisive proof of their possession of this faculty every moment.”[11]