| Summary: | "The book's subject is "Mind in Evolution," but no one will expect that such a subject should be treated with any pretence of adequacy within a single volume or by a single writer. The contribution offered in the following pages is of a double character. There is, first, an attempt to sketch in outline what seem to the writer to be the main phases of mental development. There is, secondly, an attempt to fill in this outline so far as the lower phases are concerned. To put the same distinction in different words, a hypothesis is propounded as to the general trend of mental evolution, and an attempt is made to test this hypothesis so far as animal intelligence and the generic distinction between animal and human intelligence are concerned. For the rest, that is to say in all that relates to the higher development of the human mind in society, the outline is left to be filled in upon a future occasion. The whole subject naturally falls into the two main divisions of animal and human evolution, and the mass of matter to be dealt with is so great that it is convenient to keep the two parts separate. At the same time evolution is a single continuous process the different phases of which are only seen in their true significance when treated as parts of the whole to which they belong. This is my excuse for combining a general design with a partial execution. Even as to that portion of the hypothesis which I have described as being tested in the present work I cannot pretend that the test is in any sense final. The hypothesis, though it appears to me to stand the test thus far, remains a hypothesis. The nature and limits of animal intelligence in its higher forms are matters of keen controversy, and will long remain so. In a science so little advanced as Comparative Psychology the justification for publishing any opinions or arguments must lie not in any pretence to finality, but in the hope of suggesting further investigation." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2005 APA, all rights reserved).
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