Animal Life and Intelligence. 



circumstances displayed in many instinctive activities, 

 even those which we have reason to believe were evolved 

 without the co-operation of intelligence. 



There remain, therefore, the novelty of the adjustment 

 and the individuality displayed in these adjustments. And 

 here we seem to have the essential features of intelligent 

 activities. The ability to perform acts in special adaptation 

 to special circumstances, the power of exercising individual 

 choice between contradictory promptings, and the indi- 

 viduality or originality manifested in dealing with the 

 complex conditions of an ever-changing environment, 

 these seem to be the distinctive features of intelligence. 

 On the other hand, in instinctive actions there seems to be 

 no choice ; the organism is impelled to their performance 

 through impulse, as by a stern necessity ; they are so far 

 from novel that they are performed by every individual of 

 the species, and have been so performed by their ancestors 

 for generations ; and, in performing the instinctive action, 

 the animal seems to have no more individuality or originality 

 than a piece of adequately wound clockwork. 



It may be said that, in granting to animals a power of 

 individual choice, we are attributing to them free-will ; and 

 surely (it may be added), after denying to them reason, we 

 cannot, in justice and in logic, credit them with this, man's 

 choicest gift. I shall not here enter into the free-will con- 

 troversy. I shall be content with defining what I mean by 

 saying that animals have a power of individual choice. 

 Two weather-cocks are placed on adjoining church pinnacles, 

 two clouds are floating across the sky, two empty bottles 

 are drifting down a stream. None of these has any power 

 of individual choice. They are completely at the mercy of 

 external circumstances. On the other hand, two dogs are 

 trotting down the road, and come to a point of divergence ; 

 one goes to the right hand, the other to the left hand. 

 Here each exercises a power of individual choice as to 

 which way he shall go. Or, again, my brother and I are 

 out for a walk, and our father's dog is with us. After a 

 while we part, each to proceed on his own way. Pincher 



