XIV 
FUNDAMENTAL PROBLEMS 
425 
Supposed Action of Animal Intelligence. 
The following passage briefly summarises Mr. Cope’s 
position: “ Intelligence is a conservative principle, and 
will always direct effort and use into lines which will be 
beneficial to its possessor. Here we have the source of the 
fittest, i.e. addition of parts by increase and location of 
growth-force, directed by the influence of various kinds of 
compulsion in the lower, and intelligent option among higher 
animals. Thus intelligent choice, taking advantage of the 
successive evolution of physical conditions, may be regarded 
as the originator of the fittest , while natural selection is the 
tribunal to which all results of accelerated growth are sub¬ 
mitted. This preserves or destroys them, and determines the 
new points of departure on which accelerated growth shall 
build.” 1 
This notion of “ intelligence ”—the intelligence of the 
animal itself-—determining its own variation, is so evidently a 
very partial theory, inapplicable to the whole vegetable king¬ 
dom, and almost so to all the lower forms of animals, amongst 
which, nevertheless, there is the very same adaptation and 
co-ordination of parts and functions as among the highest, that 
it is strange to see it put forward with such confidence as 
necessary for the completion of Darwin’s theory. If “ the 
various kinds of compulsion ”—by which are apparently meant 
the laws of variation, growth, and reproduction, the struggle 
for existence, and the actions necessary to preserve life under 
the conditions of the animal’s environment—are sufficient to 
have developed the varied forms of the lower animals and of 
plants, we can see no reason why the same “ compulsion ” 
should not have carried on the development of the higher 
animals also. The action of this “ intelligent option ” is alto¬ 
gether unproved; while the acknowledgment that natural 
selection is the tribunal which either preserves or destroys the 
variations submitted to it, seems quite inconsistent with the 
statement that intelligent choice is the “orginator of the 
fittest,” since whatever is really “the fittest” can never be 
destroyed by natural selection, which is but another name for 
the survival of the fittest. If “ the fittest ” is always definitely 
1 Origin of the Fittest, p. 40. 
