INTELLIGENCE AND INSTINCT 



155 



and time, which the insect knows without having 

 learned them. 



Now, if we look at intelligence from the same point 

 of view, we find that it also knows certain things with 

 out having learned them. But the knowledge in the 

 two cases is of a very different order. We must be 

 careful here not to revive again the old philosophical 

 dispute on the subject of innate ideas. So we will 

 confine ourselves to the point on which every one is 

 agreed, to wit, that the young child understands im 

 mediately things that the animal will never understand, 

 and that in this sense intelligence, like instinct, is an 

 inherited function, therefore an innate one. But this 

 innate intelligence, although it is a faculty of knowing, 

 knows no object in particular. When the new-born babe 

 seeks for the first time its mother s breast, so showing 

 that it has knowledge (unconscious, no doubt) of a thing 

 it has never seen, we say, just because the innate 

 knowledge is in this case of a definite object, that it 

 belongs to instinct and not to intelligence. Intelli 

 gence does not then imply the innate knowledge of 

 any object. And yet, if intelligence knows nothing 

 by nature, it has nothing innate. What, then, if 

 it be ignorant of all things, can it know ? Besides 

 things, there are relations. The new-born child, so 

 far as intelligent, knows neither definite objects nor 

 a definite property of any object ; but when, a little 

 later on, he will hear an epithet being applied to a sub 

 stantive, he will immediately understand what it means. 

 The relation of attribute to subject is therefore seized 

 by him naturally, and the same might be said of the 

 general relation expressed by the verb, a relation so im 

 mediately conceived by the mind that language can leave 

 it to be understood, as is instanced in rudimentary 



