it

biophors derived from specialized determinants may influence in an analogous manner the spin of the similar determinants in the germinal cells. Be this as it may, appears to me, that if, as I have above contended, the development of definite and self-consistent artistic, ethical, and other ideals is due to selective synthesis, under the conditioning restraints of a psychical environment, we have herein all that can reasonably be required by any one who is content to adopt an interpretation of nature, including psychical nature, based on the principles of evolution. An activity which is selective and synthetic is disclosed throughout all the operations of nature, and in psychology is an essential factor in mental development. But there is no evidence that this activity is peculiar to psychology, and there is no evidence that it is external to, and not naturally inherent in, the phenomena which it is the business of empirical psychology to describe.

CHAPTER XX.

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF MAN AND THE HIGHER ANIMALS COMPARED.

IN

N the last two chapters I have endeavoured to indicate the relation of mental evolution to evolution in general, and to show that the selective synthesis which gives unity to the individual mind is of like nature with that which a study of evolution discloses throughout natural occurrences.

We must now take up the subject where we left it at the close of the sixteenth chapter, in which I contended that a very large percentage of the activities of animals may be fairly explained as due to intelligent adaptation through association founded on sense-experience. I freely admit that there is a small-in my opinion very small-outstanding percentage of cases, the explanation of which seems to involve the attribution to animals of powers of perception and of rational thought. But seeing the smallness of the number of cases of this type, and seeing the anecdotal character of the record, it is my opinion-an opinion which I shall have no hesitation in changing, if the results of systematic investigation and carefully conducted experimental observations warrant my so doing-that, were all the circumstances known, this outstanding percentage would disappear, and that the whole range of animal activities would be explicable as the result of intelligent adaptation. If this be so, then, in comparing the psychology of man and the higher animals, the radical difference lies in the fact that man perceives particular relations among phenomena, and builds the generalized results of these per

ceptions into the fabric of his conceptual thought; while animals do not perceive the relations, and have no conceptual thought, nor any knowledge-if we use this word to denote the result of such conceptual thought. Whether this conclusion (or hypothesis, if the word be preferred) is valid or not, will have to be settled, if it can be settled at all, not by any number of anecdotes,-interesting, and to some extent valuable, as such anecdotes are, but by carefully conducted experimental observations, carried out as far as possible under nicely controlled conditions.

It is not my intention here to go over again the ground we have already covered. Enough has been said on that aspect of the comparative psychology of men and animals. But there are other aspects, on which little has been said. The emotional aspect of the psychical life has, for example, received but little consideration.

In the chapter on Automatism and Control, I said that primitively, and in the lower organisms, control is determined by the predominance of pleasurable or painful tone in the sensory centres which are at any time conspiring to influence the centre of control. But I added, that for man, in so far as he is a reflective being who frames ideals of conduct, this statement was too crude, and was contradicted by experience, unless we extend the meaning of the words "pleasurable" and "painful" in a way that can scarcely be regarded as satisfactory.

Now, the emotional states of men and animals are extraordinarily complex. Associated with every sensationelement there is, or may be, an emotional tone. I shall use this expression to denote the aspect of the sensation in virtue of which the organism which experiences it tends either on the one hand to seek its continuance or its repetition, or on the other hand to exclude it from consciousness. Now, as we have already seen, the states of consciousness which constitute the psychical wave of empirical psychology

are exceedingly complex, with focal impressions or ideas and a marginal setting. Motor sensations contribute very largely to the states of consciousness. And what we call emotional states are the net result of the summation of emotional tone of all the sensation-elements which in varying degrees contribute towards states of consciousness. No wonder that their complexity is such as to baffle analysis. Moreover that synthesis which we have seen to be so important in sense-experience, and in the perceptual and conceptual superstructure that is founded thereon, is not less important in the emotional aspect of conscious experience. It is practically impossible to analyse even such a relatively simple emotional state as anger into its constituent elements of emotional tone. There is little doubt that the predominant impulses, with the effects of which the emotion is associated, are motor impulses. But the synthesis of these is carried out below the threshold of consciousness; their dissociation point, to borrow again an analogy from chemical science, is in the infra-conscious region. For psychology, as such, they are undecomposable. Just as we are consciously aware of only the net results of a great number of motor impulses, which synthetically combine to give rise to our motor sensations,—so too are we only consciously aware of the net results of the vast number of concurrent and conspiring impulses whose emotional tones synthetically combine to constitute that complex product which is felt as diffused throughout the whole body, focal and marginal alike, of the psychical wave in the moment of experience, and to which we apply the phrase "an emotional state." I say focal and marginal alike; for it would seem like omitting the central character of the drama, if we excluded the focal impression or idea, to the presence of which the emotion owes its origin. I am, however, disposed to regard the emotional state itself as mainly a matter of the marginal background of consciousness. Yonder fox-terrier who has

caught sight of his old enemy the butcher's cur is brim-full of emotional tone all down his ruffled back to the very tip of his tail. The cur is in the focus of his consciousness; but it is set in a background of emotion that is thrilling in from every fibre of his frame. So too the mongrel that limply cowers in abject fear has the stick of his ruffianly master in focus; but it is the margin of consciousness that is trembling with emotional tone. The more I study the emotions the more do I feel convinced that they are marginal to consciousness, a matter of the mental background. And this fact serves further to increase the difficulty of any adequate analysis and classification of the emotions.

I do not propose to attempt here any detailed consideration of the emotional aspect of the practical life of senseexperience. I think that comparative psychology may fairly assume that throughout the range of the sense-experience, common to men and animals, their emotional states are of like nature with ours. And wherever the activities prompted by sense-experience have reference not only to the individual performer, but to other organisms, for whom, with whom, or against whom they are carried out, the associated emotional states, which, it must be remembered, constitute only the emotional aspects of sense-experience, have not only an individual, but a sympathetic bearing. The sympathy is indeed in merely the sense-experiential, not the reflective and self-conscious, stage. But it forms the basis of that higher sympathy which differentiates the social life of man from the social life of animals.

What we have especially to note is that the perception of relations, and the conceptual thought which grows thereout, brings with it a new order of emotional elements-those emotional tones which are associated with the relations themselves, which are synthetically woven into the already complex web and woof of the emotions of senseexperience. It is difficult to disentangle these threads and