another word (Instinct)--and rightly
perhaps, because their actions are plainly not the result of definite
self-conscious reasoning, such as we use, carried out by each
individual; but are (as has been abundantly proved by Samuel Butler and
others) the systematic expression of experiences gathered up and sorted
out and handed down from generation to generation in the bosom of the
race--an Intelligence in fact, or Insight, of larger subtler scope than
the other, and belonging to the tribal or racial Being rather than to
the isolated individual--a super-consciousness in fact, ramifying afar
in space and time.

But if we allow (as we must) this unity and perfection of nature, and
this somewhat cosmic character of the mind, to exist among the Animals,
we can hardly refuse to believe that there must have been a period when
Man, too, hardly as yet differentiated from them, did himself
possess these same qualities--perhaps even in greater degree than the
animals--of grace and beauty of body, perfection of movement and action,
instinctive perception and knowledge (of course in limited spheres); and
a period when he possessed above all a sense of unity with his fellows
and with surrounding Nature which became the ground of a common
consciousness between himself and his tribe, similar to that which
Maeterlinck, in the case of the Bees, calls the Spirit of the Hive. (1)
It would be difficult, nay impossible, to suppose that human beings
on their first appearance formed an entire exception in the process of
evolution, or that they were completely lacking in the very graces and
faculties which we so admire in the animals--only of course we see that
(LIKE the animals) they would not be SELF-conscious in these matters,
and what perception they had of their relations to each other or to
the world around them would be largely inarticulate and
SUB-conscious--though none the less real for that.

(1) See The Life of the Bee by Maurice Maeterlinck; and for
numerous similar cases among other animals, P. Kropotkin's Mutual Aid: a
factor in Evolution.

Let us then grant this preliminary assumption--and it clearly is not
a large or hazardous one--and what follows? It follows--since to-day
discord is the rule, and Man has certainly lost the grace, both physical
and mental, of the animals--that at some period a break must have
occurred in the evolution-process, a discontinuity--similar perhaps to
that which occurs in the life of a child at