2SO 



HARDWICKE'S SCIENCE-GOSSIP. 



fallibility which centuries of vaunted reasoning have 

 not expelled from our prouder race ? The very fact 

 that animals make mistakes sometimes shows how 

 needful it is that their impulse or instinct should be 

 guided by intelligence or reason, by the experience of 

 life, the instruction and example of their elders, and, 

 perhaps, "inherited memory." Day by day we are 

 laughing at the frailties, the errors, the weaknesses of 

 others, and, let us hope, at our own ; shall we then 

 exult that a beaver misplaces his dam ? The associa- 

 tion of ideas, on which so much stress is laid by 

 C. B., is the starting-point of our reasoning processes, 

 but up and down the animal world we find the 

 relation to that starting-point very various, some 

 animals, including some men, having come short of it, 

 while many animals have passed beyond, or, as most 

 leading naturalists would maintain, the highest efforts 

 of the brutes have done so. It is interesting to note 

 that in Webster's Dictionary the word instinct is 

 explained as, " the natural unreasoning impulse in an 

 animal, by which it is guided to the performance of 

 any action without thought of improvement in the 

 method," — while reason is said to be "the faculty 

 or capacity of the human mind by which it is dis- 

 tinguished from the inferior animals." It is needless, 

 after the numerous instances and the wide range of 

 facts on record, to insist that animals perform many 

 actions which cannot be attributed to an unreasoning 

 impulse. No one can touch these questions without 

 using the great name of Darwin, and it did occur to 

 me that in quoting his statement, that "only a few 

 persons now dispute that animals possess some power 

 of reasoning," that opinion would have some weight. 

 It was therefore with a comical feeling of injured 

 innocence that^I find Mr. H. D. Barclay stating that 

 "The Darwinian hypothesis is not only unsupported 

 by facts, but it is in flagrant contradiction to them " 

 — and to support this marvellous ipse dixit adducing 

 one or two well-worn objections, the value of which is 

 well known. It is to be hoped that Mr. Barclay does 

 not wish to emulate the Edinburgh reviewer who 

 came forth to crush the fallacies of evolution, and 

 who has met with such condign punishment in the 

 " Fortnightly Review" of October. We are told that, 

 as far as can be judged, brutes possess no power, of 

 abstract thought, imagination, introspection, nor any 

 moral sense : but will any]one who owns an intelligent 

 dog, or who has read the recent correspondence 

 in " Nature," to say nothing of any elementary work 

 of Natural History, admit this ? The passage con- 

 cerning the spider in my note in the July number of 

 Science-Gossit was, as there stated, quoted from 

 Professor Max Midler, who himself drew the illustra- 

 tion from Flourens' " De la Raison ; " my contention 

 would be that the spider when he finds his web broken 

 considers whether he shall repair it, or start afresh — 

 and that he exercises judgment and reflection in 

 coming to a decision. To whatever branch of 

 natural science we turn we find nearly all the leading 

 men evolutionists : as Sir John Lubbock has said, 

 " the doctrine of evolution, in some form or other, 

 is accepted by most, if not by all, the greatest 

 naturalists of Europe." And Dr. Allen Thomson, 

 who has followed the secret of life unto its inmost 

 recesses, said in his presidential address to the 

 British Association in 1877 : "I consider it impossible 

 for any one to be a faithful student of embryology, in 

 the present state of science, without at the same time 

 becoming an evolutionist." I am far from saying, any 

 more than Mr. Darwin himself, that the whole theory 

 of evolution is complete and finally established ; it is 

 enough to know that the most competent students 

 have facts and to spare in support of that theory. But 

 1 arrest myself in so ludicrous au endeavour as that of 



supporting the doctrine of evolution. One point 

 more. Mr. Gilliard suggests that "the power of 

 arranging facts, drawing deductions from them, and 

 acting from those deductions, uninfluenced by the 

 impelling force of instinct," result from reason, and 

 that this kind of reason is only possible in man. 

 Without stopping to criticise the terminology, and 

 admitting that the suggestion has a limited appli- 

 cation, is it not obvious that in the millenniums during 

 which the human race has educated itself, mainly 

 through the power of speech, its advance beyond 

 the brute world is not to be wondered at ? Among 

 all the causes of melancholy, Aeriall Divels, Fiery 

 Divels, Love, or any other in the black list of 

 Burton's Anatomie, perhaps the one most calculated 

 to depress a philosophic thinker is the slow progress of 

 the human race to the goal of perfection prophesied 

 for it by Mr. Herbert Spencer and other hopeful spirits. 

 ■ — James Hooper, Denmark Hill, S.E. 



Instinct and Intelligence in Animals. — All 

 evidence seems to indicate that instinct and intelli- 

 gence are not two distinct forms or modes of mentality, 

 but a lower and higher development of one and the 

 same form or mode. Many instances have been given 

 in the pages of this journal and elsewhere of instinct 

 which has, under peculiar circumstances, diverged into 

 intelligent reasoning, and it is well known that many 

 of man's thoughts and actions, which at some time or 

 other have needed the exercise of distinct and ap- 

 preciable mental energy, tend by continuance and 

 habit to develope into illustrations of unconscious 

 cerebration ; and this phase of intellectual activity 

 appears to be in many respects the counterpart of 

 instinct in the lower animals. A man who desires to 

 reach a certain spot, commences to walk thereto, but 

 does not consider the disposition of the members 

 necessary for this action, although, in the early period 

 of his life, it cost him considerable trouble and practice 

 to acquire this muscular harmony, of which now he 

 takes no heed. So on the part of birds building their 

 nests, or migrating by reason of instinct, or untaught 

 ability, or, better still, hereditary, as distinct from 

 acquired ability, have a motive. They feel a want, 

 and unconsciously know how to supply it, performing 

 all that is necessary without a consciousness or con- 

 sideration of their actions. Further, there must of 

 necessity exist certain primordial structures of an 

 instinctive or intuitive kind, upon which all that a 

 man is as a rational or intelligent being must be built. 

 The difference between these primordial structures 

 and the instinct of the lower animals appears to be 

 that the former is capable of great development, while 

 the latter, from the circumstances of the animal, needs 

 no higher development, and therefore receives none. 

 The calf, directly it is dropped, uses its legs and 

 walks, and never finds any other use for them. The 

 child is some time after birth before it exercises its 

 similar germ of volition, and masters the art of 

 walking, but subsequently it carries this to a much 

 higher development, and learns to use its legs in a 

 variety of ways, saltatory, gymnastic, and otherwise. 

 Yet, though the one walks instinctively, and the 

 other by intelligent effort, they have a similar voli- 

 tional germ, and when the human being comes in time 

 to walk, all unconscious of his effort, ' ' nescio quod 

 meditatis mtgarum, ct lotus in illis," there does not 

 appear to be much difference between. This view 

 would indicate that instinct and intelligence are 

 identical in form, though not in degree ; and that 

 animals being allowed to possess instinct, may, 

 without any strain of the recognised facts of mental 

 science, be also allowed the possession of intelligence. 

 —F. H. Habben, B.A. 



