Finding that the labour required for the investigation, even as thus limited, is much greater than I originally anticipated, it appears to me undesirable to delay publication until the whole shall have been completed. I have therefore decided to publish the treatise in successive instalments, of which the present constitutes the first. As indicated by the title, it is concerned exclusively with the Origin of Human Faculty. Future instalments will deal with the Intellect, Emotions, Volition, Morals, and Religion. It will, however, be several years before I shall be in a position to publish these succeeding instalments, notwithstanding that some of them are already far advanced.
Touching the present instalment, it is only needful to remark that from a controversial point of view it is, perhaps, the most important. If once the genesis of conceptual thought from non-conceptual antecedents be rendered apparent, the great majority of competent readers at the present time would be prepared to allow that the psychological barrier between the brute and the man is shown to have been overcome. Consequently, I have allotted what might otherwise appear to be a disproportionate amount of space to my consideration of this the _origin_ of human faculty—disproportionate, I mean, as compared with what has afterwards to be said touching the _development_ of human faculty in its several branches already named. Moreover, in the present treatise I shall be concerned chiefly with the psychology of my subject—reserving for my next instalment a full consideration of the light which has been shed on the mental and social condition of early man by the study of his own remains on the one hand, and of existing savages on the other. Even as thus restricted, however, the subject-matter of the present treatise will be found more extensive than most persons would have been prepared to expect. For it does not appear to me that this subject-matter has hitherto received at the hands of psychologists any approach to the amount of analysis of which it is susceptible, and to which—in view of the general theory of evolution—it is unquestionably entitled. But I have everywhere endeavoured to avoid undue prolixity, trusting that the intelligence of any one who is likely to read the book will be able to appreciate the significance of important points, without the need of expatiation on the part of the writer. The only places, therefore, where I feel that I may be fairly open to the charge of unnecessary reiteration, are those in which I am endeavouring to render fully intelligible the newer features of my analysis. But even here I do not anticipate that readers of any class will complain of the efforts which are thus made to assist their understanding of a somewhat complicated matter.