294 Animal Intelligence 



faculty, for we could put together the gist of our contention 

 in a few words. We should say : - 



"The function of intellect is to provide a means of modi- 

 fying our reactions to the circumstances of life, so that we 

 may secure pleasure, the symptom of welfare. Its general 

 law is that when in a certain situation an animal acts so 

 that pleasure results, that act is selected from all those per- 

 formed and associated with that situation, so that, when 

 the situation recurs, the act will be more likely to follow than 

 it was before ; that on the contrary the acts which, when 

 performed in a certain situation, have brought discomfort, 

 tend to be dissociated from that situation. The intellectual 

 evolution of the race consists in an increase in the number, 

 delicacy, complexity, permanence and speed of formation 

 of such associations. In man this increase reaches such a 

 point that an apparently new type of mind results, which 

 conceals the real continuity of the process. This mental 

 evolution parallels the evolution of the cell structures of 

 the brain from few and simple and gross to many and 

 complex and delicate." 



Nowhere more truly than in his mental capacities is man 

 a part of nature. His instincts, that is, his inborn tendencies 

 to feel and act in certain ways, show throughout marks of 

 kinship with the lower animals, especially with our nearest 

 relatives physically, the monkeys. His sense-powers show 

 no new creation. His intellect we have seen to be a 

 simple though extended variation from the general animal 

 sort. This again is presaged by the similar variation 

 in the case of the monkeys. Amongst the minds of animals 

 that of man leads, not as a demigod from another planet, 

 but as a king from the same race. 



