unless it resorted to some other effective means of escape. Hence the horse is a doomed "terminal form of life" which without the protection of man would have been already extinct; and once an animal becomes extinct it never again appears on the scene of life. Some animals find security by flying; others by burrowing in the earth; and others by climbing trees. Some fight the battle of life with sharp claws; others with sharp-pointed teeth. Even an elongated neck, or a protruding nose, may be the straw which turns the scale in favour of the particular mode of living the animal has selected, or which has been forced on him. Indeed, there is scarcely a physical, chemical, mechanical, protective, or aggressive principle invented by man which has not been already utilised in the armoury of organic life.
Mans Career a New Departure..
But man's advance was not based on any of the principles or contrivances hitherto adopted in the laboratory of the organic world. His career as Homo sapiens is absolutely a new departure in the history of organic evolution. We have already emphasised the fact that his superiority over other animals is due to his acquisition of higher mental endowments. I do not, however, assert that man has a monopoly of the reasoning faculty—except perhaps in dealing with abstract ideas—and that he alone can draw and anticipate logical conclusions from a combination of physical phenomena of daily occurrence, for many animals can do this. They have learned by experience to interpret to a certain extent the ordinary phenomena of the external world, and to conform to their behests. But animal intelligence, whether instinctive, i.e., hereditarily acquired, or suddenly inspired by current phenomena, is altogether on a more limited scale than that of man; and its manifestations are very much alike, seldom going beyond the power of recognising what is beneficial or injurious to the self-preservation of the individual. This limitation in the mental capacity of the lower animals is determined by the uniformity of cause and effect in the material world, the interpretation of which involves no higher reasoning than simple obedience to physical laws. But in the case of man a new element is superadded. Man is not
