ii INTELLIGENCE AND INSTINCT 149 



of the two will secure to the living being the greater 

 empire over nature. 



We may surmise that they began by being implied 

 in each other, that the original psychical activity 

 included both at once, and that, if we went far enough 

 back into the past, we should find instincts more nearly 

 approaching intelligence than those of our insects, in 

 telligence nearer to instinct than that of our vertebrates, 

 intelligence and instinct being, in this elementary con 

 dition, prisoners of a matter which they are not yet able 

 to control. If the force immanent in life were an un 

 limited force, it might perhaps have developed instinct 

 and intelligence together, and to any extent, in the same 

 organisms. But everything seems to indicate that this 

 force is limited, and that it soon exhausts itself in its 

 very manifestation. It is hard for it to go far in several 

 directions at once : it must choose. Now, it has the 

 choice between two modes of acting on the material 

 world : it can either effect this action directly by creating 

 an organized instrument to work with ; or else it can 

 effect it indirectly through an organism which, instead of 

 possessing the required instrument naturally, will itself 

 construct it by fashioning inorganic matter. Hence in 

 telligence and instinct, which diverge more and more as 

 they develop, but which never entirely separate from each 

 other. On the one hand, the most perfect instinct of the 

 insect is accompanied by gleams of intelligence, if only 

 in the choice of place, time and materials of construction : 

 the bees, for example, when by exception they build in 

 the open air, invent new and really intelligent arrange 

 ments to adapt themselves to such new conditions. 1 But, 

 on the other hand, intelligence has even more need of 



1 Bouvicr, &quot; La Nidification de abeilles 1 air libre &quot; (C.R. de I Ac. des 

 Science*, ^ mai 1906). 



