Evolution of mind

“ I am now to account to you for the origin of the human mind, upon the same hypothesis, namely, that man is a development from some previous and lower organism. I acknowledge that what we call mind, or intellect, has to be accounted for; and that we who hold the evolution theory of the origin of man as an animal must be able to suggest how his intellect became developed by the operation of the same natural causes which produced his physical organization. ”

“ To point out the precise method of the evolution of mind, step by step, until the final climax of consciousness was reached, would require an abler pen than mine; therefore I shall be content to briefly notice the different products of intellectual development in the order in which they are unfolded, showing the analogy between ontogenesis, or the life-history of the individual, and phylogenesis, or that of the whole race, not now as regards bodily, but only mental, evolution. ”

“ In the development of thought, feeling, and will, we have noticed a certain parallelism, the attainment of new knowledge, the deviation of feeling into new channels, and the direction of will to new ends; indeed, our analysis must bring us to regard this development as something more than a parallelism, since, as we have seen, thought, feeling, and will, cannot be defined as separate organs of mind. And we are here led to notice a theory sometimes advanced, that the feelings of one individual can never be changed by another. ”

“ And this antecedent presumption is still further strengthened by the undeniable fact that, in the case of every individual human being, [391] the human mind presents to actual observation a process of gradual development, extending from infancy to manhood. ”

“ Will you, then, maintain that up to this time the two orders of psychical existence are identical in kind, but that during its ascent through this final series of gradations the human mind in some way becomes distinct in kind, not merely from the mind of animals, but also from its own previous self? ”

“ The evolution of mind is supported by a series of facts not less incontrovertible and convincing than that by which physical evolution is established. The data of mental evolution are not quite so definite and plentiful as those of physical evolution. But this is due to the greater intangibility of mental phenomena and to the backward condition of the psychological sciences, especially of comparative psychology. ”

“ I desire to show that in the one province, as in the other, the light which has been shed by the doctrine of evolution is of a magnitude which we are now only beginning to appreciate; and that by adopting the theory of continuous development from the one order of mind to the other, we are able scientifically to explain the whole mental constitution of man, even in those parts of it which, to former generations, have appeared inexplicable. ”

“ For at present their argument goes upon the assumption that throughout all the phases of its development a human mind is one in kind—that it is nowhere fundamentally changed from one order of existence to another. ”

“ Taking, then, these several a priori considerations together, they must, in my opinion, be fairly held to make out a very strong primâ facie case in favour of the view that there has been no interruption of the developmental process in the course of psychological history; but that the mind of man, like the mind of animals—and, indeed, like everything else in the domain of living nature—has been evolved. ”

“ But, as we have now so fully seen, no such unique exception to the otherwise uniform process of evolution can here be maintained: the phases of development which have gradually led up to conceptual thought admit of being as clearly traced as those which have led to any other product, whether of life or of mind. ”

“ But even here 'specifically stated, the problem is to interpret mental evolution in terms of the redistribution of matter and motion'. [13] An adequate explanation of nervous evolution involves an adequate explanation of the concomitant evolution of mind. It is true that the antithesis of subject and object is never to be transcended 'while consciousness lasts'. ”

“ Mind consists of feelings and the relations among feelings. [41] By compositions of the relations, and ideas of relations, intelligence arises. By composition of feelings, and ideas of feelings, emotion arises. And, other things equal, the evolution of either is great in proportion as the composition is great. One of the [Pg 51] necessary implications is that cognition becomes higher in proportion as it is remoter from reflex action; while emotion becomes higher in proportion as it is remoter from sensation. ”

“ Again, so long as it is passing through the lower phases of its development, the human mind assuredly ascends through a scale of mental faculties which are parallel with those that are permanently presented by the psychological species of the animal kingdom. A glance at the Diagram which I have placed at the beginning of my previous work will serve to show in how strikingly quantitative, as well as qualitative, a manner the development of an individual human mind follows the order of mental evolution in the animal kingdom. ”

“ Clearly, therefore, the proposition that an "originating Mind" is the cause of Evolution, is a proposition that can be entertained so long only as no attempt is made to unite in thought its two terms in the alleged relation. ”

“ The world's thought, just previous to that time, had made great strides forward through the recognition of the laws of evolution, which culminated in one master mind, through great elaboration and by citing numerous examples, assigning cogent and necessary reasons therefor. ”

“ Therefore, in distinguishing between mind and matter, we are still in the realm of the natural, and follow the path of experience, if by experience is understood not alone immediate experience, but also the conclusions which directly or by strict analogy may be drawn from it. ”

“ In other words, the first genesis of true self-consciousness marks a comparatively low level in the evolution of the human mind—as we might expect that it should, if its genesis depends upon, and therefore lies so near to, those precedent conditions in merely animal psychology to which I have assigned it. ”

“ Time, which, if age and experience can give wisdom, ought to be so much wiser than any of us, has consigned the greater part of them to oblivion, and evolution is taking its place, one might say, as part of the furniture of the human mind. Chief among these objections was the assertion that evolution could give no satisfactory account of the origin of morality and the genesis of conscience. ”

“ VI THE MENTAL EVOLUTION OF MAN The problems dealing with the make-up of the human mind and with the evidences of mental evolution bring the student to matters of more vivid human interest. Mental phenomena are so complex and intricate that it is well-nigh impossible to analyze their history without a knowledge of the principles derived from the broad study of evolution as a general doctrine, where human prejudice is not so large a factor and where his perspective is less affected by the proximity of the observer to his facts. ”

“ For, by a continuous advance along the same line of development, the human mind is enabled to think about abstractions of its own making, which are more and more remote from the sensuous perception of concrete objects ”

“ The vestiges found everywhere in the mental and social phenomena of man and other animals have arisen as necessary facts in the process of mental evolution. They are the vermiform appendices of the mind. ”

“ And when this advancing organization of faculties has proceeded to the extent of enabling the mind incipiently to predicate its own states, the mental organism may be said for the first time to be quickening into the life of true self-consciousness. ”

“ We are now, I think, in possession of sufficient material to begin our answer to the question with which we set out—namely, Is it conceivable that the human mind can have arisen by way of a natural genesis from the minds of the higher quadrumana? ”

“ So, when a philosopher arose who announced a doctrine of evolution, in which the progress of matter toward perceptibility would be traced together with the advance of the mind toward rationality, in which the complication of correspondences between the external and the internal would be followed step by step, in which change would become the very substance of things—to him all eyes were turned. ”

“ The third division of our evidence relating to mental evolution constitutes what we have called the palæontology of mind. By this term we mean the study of human minds of the past as we may know them through the many varied relics and documents which indicate their characters. It is only too obvious to every one that human knowledge has advanced in the course of time and that every department of human thought and mental activity has participated in this progress. ”

“ All will agree that developed thought is involved in the concept, judgment and inference, while, if it appears at all in the percept and sensation, it is more or less undeveloped and consequently lies quite without the province of the logical field.
8. EVOLUTION AND THE THINKING MIND.
Speaking in general terms evolution is a development from a lower to a higher state. Thus have come the various species of the vegetable and animal world. The lower orders of life are simple in structure and function. ”

“ Intercommunication by means of language, approbation and blame, and all that arises out of reflective thought, are but foreshadowed in the mental life of animals. Still he contends that these may be explained on the doctrine of evolution. He urges [185] "that man is variable in body and mind; and that the variations are induced, either directly or indirectly, by the same general causes, and obey the same general laws, as with the lower animals." He correlates mental development with the evolution of the brain. ”

“ It is believed that the results of mental evolution, as the mind approaches the transfinite as a limit, will operate to minimize the fluxional quantity which subsists between all objects of sense and their ideal representation as data of consciousness. ”

“ If, in accordance with our assumption, the process of organic and of mental evolution has been continuous throughout the whole region of life and of mind, with the one exception of the mind of man, on grounds of an immensely large analogy we must deem it antecedently improbable that the process of evolution, elsewhere so uniform and ubiquitous, should have been interrupted at its terminal phase. ”

“ And, indeed, even in this our time, which is marked by the first opening dawn of the science of psychology, we have but to look with eyes unprejudiced to see that the philosophy of evolution is here like a rising sun of truth, eclipsing all the lesser lights of previous philosophies, dispelling superstitions like vapors born of darkness, and revealing to our gladdened gaze the wonders of a world till now unseen. ”

“ Therefore, upon the face of them, the facts of comparative psychology now before us are, to say the least, strongly suggestive of the superadded powers of the human intellect having been due to a process of evolution. ”

“ We must also be permitted to bear in mind that evolution, though it may explain everything else, cannot explain itself. ”

“ For it is evident that “Mental Evolution in Man” is a subject comprehending so enormous a field that, unless some lines of limitation are drawn within which its discussion is to be confined, no one writer could presume to deal with it. ”

“ On the contrary, an impartial doctrine of soul recognizes a long, long, descending scale of gradual evolution in the life of the soul, which leads from higher to lower human beings, from more perfect to more imperfect animals, step by step, down to those forms whose simple nerve-ganglion furnishes the starting-point of all the cell-less brain-forms of this scale. ”

“ All the few naturalists who still withhold their assent from the theory of evolution in its reference to man, expressly base their opinion on those grounds of psychology which it is the object of the present treatise to investigate. ”

“ Personality, reason, intellect, emotions, will, conscience, spirituality, and all the faculties and equipment of the soul, are naturally and easily explained upon the basis of creation, but evolution can not account for them at all.
About 2,000,000 years ago, we are told, man and the monkey family were children of the same parents. These children headed species with an even start. Yet man alone developed personality, consciousness, intelligence, and all the equipment of the soul ”

“ The implication throughout the argument has been that for every society, and for each stage in its evolution, there is an appropriate mode of feeling and thinking; and that no mode of feeling and thinking not adapted to its degree of evolution, and to its surroundings, can be permanently established. ”

“ By following up this idea, also, we might go a little further. We might arrive at the conviction that our present science is human, petty, and contingent; that it is closely linked with the structure of our sensory organs; that this structure results from the evolution which fashioned these organs; that this evolution has been an accident of history; that in the future it may be different; ”

“ My object is to seek for the principles and causes of mental evolution in man, first as regards the origin of human faculty, and next as regards the several main branches into which faculties distinctively human afterwards ramified and developed. ”

“ The first division will treat of the degrees of mental evolution of different human types, generally considered: taking account of both the mass of mental manifestation and the complexity of mental manifestation. ”