284 MENTAL FACULTIES sec. 



ments of those who have minutely studied the life of any 

 class of animals. It is indeed the custom to set down the 

 most wonderful mental powers in animals without distinction 

 as instinct, because men think they can thereby reduce the 

 importance of these faculties, and conceive them as some- 

 thing mechanical implanted in the animal's nature from the 

 beginning. Men have an idea they must at any price 

 preserve their fancied exceptional position in the animal 

 world, even though it be at the cost of their delight in nature, 

 and of their own intellectual progress. Moreover, those 

 among them who suppose they serve the Creator by their 

 belief, do not perceive that the case is just the opposite, since 

 they reduce his power instead of magnifying it. But apart 

 from this, such a view altogether excludes every explanation 

 of instinct and of the mental faculties of animals. 



On the other hand, when we explain instinct as inherited 

 experience, its phenomena appear as the result of continued 

 practice due to this experience. On this view, intelligence 

 and reason, it is true, become mechanical, but in a way which 

 does not diminish the importance of instinct, but which, on 

 the contrary, brings into stronger light the acuteness of the 

 original powers of reflection in animals, and their conscious 

 direction to a definite object. Instincts of intelligence and 

 of reason are in all cases a highly important factor in the 

 evolution of mental faculties. By the establishment of 

 these, and, in a less degree, of automatic actions, as already 

 pointed out, powers are set free which can be applied to 

 further mental effort ; they evidently constitute a means for 

 the progressive development of the mental life. 



As in the evolution of the individual body an abbrevia- 

 tion takes place in course of time which affords time, 

 material, and energy for further modification, so is it in 

 mental evolution : instinct is evolved by a suitable abbrevia- 

 tion, simplification of the process of thought. 



