350 Organic Nature s Riddle 



that only special aggregations of molecules are vital, and that 

 sensibility never appears except in a living organism, disappearing 

 with the vital activities, as we know that banks and trades-unions 

 are specifically human institutions.' 



The considerations which are here applied to vital 

 activity may be paralleled by others appHed to intelligence. 

 They will show us that however profoundly rational may 

 be that world which is commonly spoken of as irrational, 

 yet that its rationality is not really the attribute of the 

 various animals which perform such admirably calculated 

 actions, but truly belongs to what is the ultimate and 

 common cause of them all, and to that only. 



There is, indeed, a logic in mere ' feeling,' there is a logic 

 even in insentient nature ; but that logic is not the logic of 

 the crystal nor of the brute ; its true position must be sought 

 elsewhere. It is in them, but it is not of them. 



However, let us patiently consider a little this hypothesis 

 of an innate, unconscious intelligence as the cause of the 

 various strictly, or analogically, instinctive actions of animals. 



It is in the first place plain that no intelligence could 

 exist so as to adjust 'means' to 'ends,' except by the aid 

 of memory ; and ' memory ' has therefore been freely attri- 

 buted even to the lower animals. Let us see, then, what 

 the term ' memory ' really denotes. Now we cannot be 

 said to remember anything unless we are conscious that 

 what is again made present to our mind has been present 

 to our mind before. An image might recur to our 

 imagination a hundred times, but if at each recurrence it 

 was for us something altogether new and unconnected with 

 the past, we could not be said to remember it. It would 

 rather be an example of extreme ' forgetfuhiess ' than of 

 ' memory.' In ' memory,' then, there are and must be two 

 distinct elements. The first is the reproduction before the 

 mind of what has been before the mind previously, and the 



