we then found a
transition from the animal to man? Certainly not; for man is man, not
because he has no tail, but because he speaks, and speech implies not only
communication,--an animal can do that perhaps better than a man,--but it
implies thinking, and thinking not only as an animal thinks, but thinking
conceptually. And this small thing, the concept, is the transition which
no animal has ever accomplished. The moment an ape achieved it, he would
be _ipso facto_ a man, in spite of his miserable brain, and in spite of
his long tail.

"Concepts do not present themselves spontaneously (or we should find them
also among animals), but they are a special product, in part the work of
our ancestors, and inherited by us with our language, and in part even now
the work of more gifted men from time to time. This making necessarily
implies the existence of a maker, and if we now provisionally call this
maker, this transcendent, invisible, but very powerful '_x_,' mind, are we
thereby chargeable, as you say, with having conjured up a soul-phantom?
Call it a phantom if you will, but even as a phantom it has a right to
exist. Call it mind, breath, breathing, willing, or (with Schopenhauer)
will, there is always a He or It to be reckoned with. Of this He or It,
this pronominal soul-phantom, you will never rid yourself.

"And if we now perceive with our senses a world as it is given us whether
we will or no, and in this objective world, without us, which so many
regard as within us, we everywhere recognise the presence of purpose, must
we then not also have a name for that which manifests itself in nature as
purposive or rational? Shall we only call it '_x_,' or may we transfer the
word designating what works purposively in us to this Unknown, and speak
of a universal Mind without which nature could not be what it is? Nature
is not crazy nor incoherent. When the child is born, has the mother milk,
and to what purpose? Why, certainly, to nourish the child. And the child
has the lips and muscles to suck. When the fruit has ripened on the tree,
it falls to the earth full of seed. The husk breaks, the seed falls in the
soil, it rains and the rain fertilises the seed, the sun shines and makes
it grow, and when the tree has grown and again bears blossoms and fruit,
this fruit is useful to man, is food and not poison to him. Is all this
without purpose, without reason? Is it a symphony without a composer? Man,
too, needs rain and sunshine,