ch is the metaphysical faculty, which enables us to form abstract
conceptions of a kind the most remote from all practical applications,
to discuss the ultimate causes of things, the nature and qualities of
matter, motion, and force, of space and time, of cause and effect, of
will and conscience. Speculations on these abstract and difficult
questions are impossible to savages, who seem to have no mental faculty
enabling them to grasp the essential ideas or conceptions; yet whenever
any race attains to civilisation, and comprises a body of people who,
whether as priests or philosophers, are relieved from the necessity of
labour or of taking an active part in war or government, the
metaphysical faculty appears to spring suddenly into existence,
although, like the other faculties we have referred to, it is always
confined to a very limited proportion of the population.

In the same class we may place the peculiar faculty of wit and humour,
an altogether natural gift whose development appears to be parallel with
that of the other exceptional faculties. Like them, it is almost unknown
among savages, but appears more or less frequently as civilisation
advances and the interests of life become more numerous and more
complex. Like them, too, it is altogether removed from utility in the
struggle for life, and appears sporadically in a very small percentage
of the population; the majority being, as is well known, totally unable
to say a witty thing or make a pun even to save their lives.[236]

_The Interpretation of the Facts._

The facts now set forth prove the existence of a number of mental
faculties which either do not exist at all or exist in a very
rudimentary condition in savages, but appear almost suddenly and in
perfect development in the higher civilised races. These same faculties
are further distinguished by their sporadic character, being well
developed only in a very small proportion of the community; and by the
enormous amount of variation in their development, the higher
manifestations of them being many times--perhaps a hundred or a thousand
times--stronger than the lower. Each of these characteristics is totally
inconsistent with any action of the law of natural selection in the
production of the faculties referred to; and the facts, taken in their
entirety, compel us to recognise some origin for them wholly distinct
from that which has served to account for the animal
characteristics--whether bodily or ment