First. Instinct works by ancestral experience, petrified in brain structure, and transmitted.
Second. Mind works by individual and not ancestral experience.
Third. Instinct is sometimes an original endowment.
Now, can we or any others tell how it is that mind depends, just like instinct, wholly upon brain structure, and is, at the same time, unlike instinct in that it is wholly dependent on individual, not ancestral experience? And if mind or intelligence does not depend on ancestral experience, how is its origin to be accounted for on the hypothesis of heredity through evolution of species, starting, without life, instinct or mind, by blind forces operating on dead matter, and the forces themselves simply the forces of dead matter? The capacity for intellectual improvement is a remarkable peculiarity of man's nature. The instinctive habits of the lower animals are limited, are peculiar to each species, and have immediate reference to their bodily wants. Where a particular adaptation of means to ends, of actions to circumstances, is made by an individual the rest do not seem to profit by that experience, so that, although the instincts of particular animals may be modified by the training of man, or by the education of circumstances, so as to show themselves after a few generations under new forms, no elevation of intelligence ever appears to _take place spontaneously_, no physical improvement is manifested in the species at large. On the other hand, we observe in man not merely the capability of profiting by experience, but the determination to do so, which he is enabled to put into action by the power which his will, when properly disciplined, comes to possess, of directing and controlling his current of thought by fixing his attention upon any subject which he desires to keep before his mental vision. This power, so far as we know, is peculiar to man, and the presence or absence of it constitutes the difference between a being possessed of powers to determine his own course of thought and action, and a mere thinking automaton.--_Carpenter's Physiology._
Charlemagne, Emperor of Germany, who is known as a Christian prince, and Alfred the Great, of England, lived in the eight and ninth centuries. The darkest period in the dark ages was between the fifth and the eleventh, but they are known as the _earliest_ luminaries of the modern world. They encouraged learning both by example and patronage, but they could not overcome the gross ignorance of their times; nevertheless they shed a strong and living lustre over the age in which they lived. (See _Elements of General Knowledge_, by Henry Kelt, Fellow and Tutor of Trinity College, Oxford, p. 246.) Where, and under what circumstances, were their schools established? They were confined to churches and monasteries, and the monks presided over them, but they were inadequate to the task of diffusing knowledge in any extensive circle. The reign of heathenism and ignorance continued.