nt share, in the intellectual development of animals, yet which
no writer seems to have considered from this point of view. The
probable effect of this influence needs to be taken into account, in
conclusion of this section of our subject. It is that of the comparative
agency of the senses in the development of the mind, and the effects
likely to arise from the dominance of some one of the senses.

In the lowest animals touch was the predominant, if not the only sense,
taste perhaps being associated with it. But these senses, which demand
actual contact with objects, obviously could give none but the narrowest
conception of the conditions of nature. The other senses, sight,
hearing, and smell, give intimations of the existence and conditions of
more or less distant objects, and their development greatly widened the
scope of outreach in animals and must have exerted a powerful influence
upon the growth of mental conditions.

It need scarcely be said that the sense which gives the fullest and most
extended information about existing things is necessarily the one that
acts most effectively upon the mind, and that this sense is that of
sight. Hearing and smell yield us information concerning certain local
conditions of objects, but sight extends to the limits of the universe,
while in regard to near objects it has the advantage of being
practically instantaneous in action and much fuller in the information
it conveys. Sight, therefore, is evidently the most important of the
senses, so far as the broadening of the mental powers is concerned, and
any animal in which it is predominant must possess a great advantage in
this respect over those species controlled to any great degree by one of
the lower senses.

It may be said here that sight only slowly gained dominance in animal
life. Though the eye, as an organ of vision, is found at a low level in
the animate scale, the indications are that it long played a subordinate
part, and has gained its full prominence only in man. During long ages
life was confined to the sea, hosts of beings dwelling in the
semi-obscurity of the under waters, and great numbers at too great a
depth for light to reach them. To vast multitudes of these sight was
partly or completely useless. The same may be said of hearing, the
under-water habitat being nearly or completely a soundless one. The only
one of the higher senses likely to be of general use to these oceanic
forms is that of smell, and it may