350 Transactions. — Zoology. 



us that "the grades that Spirit seems to have left behind it, 

 it still possesses in the depths of its present," or when Ciirlyle 

 affirms of the old Norse religion, the " sternly impressive 

 consecration of valour," that, " unconsciously and combined 

 with higher things, it is in us yet," the modern evolutionist 

 — say, Mr. Bagehot, for instance, in his " Physics and Politics " 

 — steps in to point out that such a view is not metaphor or 

 poetry, but is scientific truth. " In 1789," he remarks, " when 

 the great men of the Constituent Assembly looked on the long 

 past, they hardly saw anytliing in it that could be praised, or 

 admired, or imitated ; all seemed a blunder — a complex error, 

 to be got rid of as soon as might be. But that error had 

 made themselves. On their very physical organization the 

 hereditary mark of old time was fixed ; their brains were 

 hardened and their nerves were steadied by the transmitted 

 results of tedious usages. The ages of monotony had had their 

 use, for they had trained men for ages when they need not be 

 monotonous." The old governments of the strong hand, as 

 he says elsewhere, " made the human nature that aftertimes 

 employ." That human nature is made and makeable. How 

 vast a revolution in psychological, ethical, and political specu- 

 lation does the importation into science of this one tliought 

 imply ! 



It is not, of course, to be asserted that the modern doc- 

 trine of heredity would not have dawned on the world even 

 apart from the study of animal intelligence. The only wonder 

 is that the world for so long lost sight of it. But animal 

 intelligence was for it, in Bacon's language, the " Prerogative 

 Instance " in regard to which it could not be overlooked. 

 M. Eibot, in his work on heredity, draws attention to the case 

 of a little dog that, at the scent of a piece of wolf's skin, went 

 into convulsions of terror. The similar case of apes born in 

 captivity being convulsed at the sight or the sound of a snake 

 is familiar. From what depths are these terrifying associations 

 drawn? Not from the depths of the animals' individual con- 

 sciousness, but from that of ancestors far back in the buried 

 past. We are becoming familiar with the notion of hereditary 

 memory. Science will perhaps some day have to try and 

 grasp the notion of hereditary identity, and will have to 

 recognise that perhaps there is a sense in which, after all, 

 Plato was right in athrming the pre-existence of the soul. 



I have not attempted in this paper to give even a resume 

 of any theory of either the nature or genesis of animal intelli- 

 gence, but have merely introduced the above in illustration of 

 the importance of the study. As to its fascination, little need 

 be said. It is the one description of study, if one can call it 

 so, that has fascinated us all as children, and that, in spite of 

 ourselves, seldom fails to fascinate us yet. \Ve have to say 



