Chap. III. Mental Powers. 6j 



turned out in the spring, often eat poisonous herbs, which they 

 afterwards avoid, we cannot feel sure that the apes do not learn 

 from their own experience or from that of their parents what 

 fruits to select. It is, however, certain, as we shall presently see, 

 that apes have an instinctive dread of serpents, and probably of 

 other dangerous animals. 



The fewness and the comparative simplicity of the instincts in 

 the higher animals are remarkable in contrast with those of the 

 ..ower animals. Cuvier maintained that instinct and intelligence 

 stand in an inverse ratio to each other ; and some have thought 

 that the intellectual faculties of the higher animals have been 

 gradually developed from their instincts. But Pouchet, in an 

 interesting essay, 2 has shewn that no such inverse ratio really 

 exists. Those insects which possess the most wondeiful instincts 

 are certainly the most intelligent. In the vertebrate series, the 

 least intelligent members, namely fishes and amphibians, do not 

 possess complex instincts; and amongst mammals the animal 

 most remarkable for its instincts, namely the beaver, is highly 

 intelligent, as will be admitted by every one who has read Mr. 

 Morgan's excellent work. 3 



Although the first dawnings of intelligence, according to Mr. 

 Herbert Spencer, 4 have been developed through the multiplica- 

 tion and co-ordination of reflex actions, and although many of 

 the simpler instincts graduate into reflex actions, and can hardly 

 be distinguished from them, as in the case of young animals 

 sucking, yet the more complex instincts seem to have originated 

 independently of intelligence. I am, however, very far from 

 wishing to deny that instinctive actions may lose their fixed and 

 untaught character, and be replaced by others performed by the 

 aid of the free will. On the other hand, some intelligent actions, 

 after being performed during several generations, become con- 

 verted into instincts and are inherited, as when birds on oceanic 

 islands learn to avoid man. These actions may then be said 

 to be degraded in character, for they are no longer performed 

 through reason or from experience. But the greater number of 

 the more complex instincts appear to have been gained in a 

 wholly different manner, through the natural selection of varia- 

 tions of simpler instinctive actions. Such variations appear to 

 arise from the same unknown causes acting on the cerebral 

 organisation, which induce slight variations or individual dif- 

 ferences in other parts of the body ; and these variations, owing 



2 ' L'lnstinct chez los Insectes.' 3 ' The American Beaver and his 



Revue des Doux Mondes,' Feb! 1870, Works,' 1868. 

 p. 690. * ' The Principles of Psvehology, 



2nd edit. 1870, pp. 4 18-44.1 



