Therefore in this field as before we need
only to amplify our knowledge of such representative psychological facts
as these by drawing upon the full stores of the special investigator, in
order to learn that human thought, like the human frame, has undergone a
natural history of transformation to become what it is and what it was
not.
Many who would be ready to accept the evolution of physical
characteristics find it impossible to treat the history of human mentality
as a subject for dispassionate consideration, because above all else the
intellectual powers of mankind seem to be truly distinctive. It is only
after constant use of the methods of science that we can bring ourselves
to see how closely we resemble lower forms in physical make-up; still
greater reluctance must be overcome before we can view our mental
processes as counterparts of those of inferior animals, so essential to
our very humanity do they seem. But our duty to undertake the task is
plain, and its discharge will be greatly facilitated by a clear
realization that mental evolution is but a part of human transformation in
times past, as the latter is only a small fraction of the universal
process of organic evolution in general.
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