Mental Evolution in Animals With a Posthumous Essay on Instinct by Charles Darwin

About this book

A reprint of a classical work in the Cambridge Library Collection.

George John Romanes (1848-94), considered by The Times to be 'the biological investigator upon whom in England the mantle of Mr. Darwin has most conspicuously descended', wrote this influential work on the evolution of the mental faculties of animals in 1883. The two scientists were close friends, and Darwin gave Romanes his notes on psychology to use in his studies. Much of the book is devoted to instinct, and contained in the appendix is a posthumous essay by Darwin on the subject, originally intended for a later edition of On the Origin of Species. Romanes' method of using anecdotal evidence over empirical research has been criticised, but this book stands as an influential work in the history of evolutionary biology; it was followed in 1888 by his Mental Evolution in Man (also reissued in this series), which discussed some of the most important issues of nineteenth-century evolutionary psychology.

Contents

Preface
Introduction

1. The criterion of mind
2. The structure and functions of nerve-tissue
3. The physical basis of mind
4. The root-principles of mind
5. Explanation of the diagram
6. Consciousness
7. Sensation
8. Pleasures and pains, memory, and association of ideas
9. Perception
10. Imagination
11. Instinct
12. Instinct (continued) - origin and development of instincts
13. Instinct (continued) - blended origin, or plasticity of instinct
14. Instinct (continued) - modes in which intelligence determines the variation of instinct in definite lines
15. Instinct (continued) - domestication
16. Instinct (continued) - local and specific varieties of instinct
17. Instinct (continued) - examination of the theories of other writers on the evolution of instinct, with a general summary of the theory here set forth
18. Instinct (continued) - cases of special difficulty with regard to the foregoing theory of the origin and development of instincts
19. Reason
20. Animal emotions, and summary of intellectual faculties

Appendix. A posthumous essay on instinct by Charles Darwin

Index

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