MENTAL EVOLUTION. The actions of animals are physiological or reflex, instinctive, and ration al. .,Nlan, with his exalted nervous vigor and brain power, alone thinks, reflects, or is self-conscious. It is probable that the more intelligent insects, and most of the vertebrates, are conscious agents. It is well-nigh impossible in the last analysis to draw the line between the mental nets of animals and man. The germs of reason exist in animals, and the intellectual qualities of man have with little doubt originated from those of the animals, wide as is the gap between the mental, moral, and spiritual nature of man, and the simple, elementary mental faculties of animals.
The result of this mental evolution—the physi cal evidence of which is seen in the great number of vestigial structures handed down from the higher mammals, in the cranial character of the highest existing races as compared with the fos sil races, in his erect position, his culture-his tory, with its progressive steps, from primitive savagery up through barbarism to civilization— shows that at first brain use and development, the exercise of wit, cunning, craft, invention, skill, mastery over the elements, over the beasts, over himself: that high endeavor, the gradual elimination of savage impulses, success in the arts and sciences, due to his social mode of life, and finally a tireless devotion in the highest types of the race to the true, the beautiful, and the good. and appreciation of the divine in
human nature, and, finally, the practice and exercise of love to God and to man—that all these have been the agents of his mental evolu tion, of his moral regeneration. and his devotion to his highest ideals, giving him the promise and potency of existence in another world than that witnessing his physical evolution, where his intel lectual and spiritual forces shall have the freest play, unhampered by a struggle for mere animal existence, by competition with baser forces.