216 EVOLUTION AND MAN S PLACE IN NATURE 



range of action belonging to vision and manipulation. 

 Smell is direct and prompt ; sight and touch combined 

 give more occupation to the animal. 1 



When next we turn to Instinct/ we find this 

 much more conspicuous in animals lower in the scale, 

 than intelligence is in the life of the higher mam 

 mals. This will appear in the contrast between the 

 ant and the dog. The comparative significance of 

 this fact is enhanced, when due value is assigned to 

 Darwin s observation that the instincts of the higher 

 mammalia are fewer and less complex. If, then, the 

 life of the higher animals were approximately so 

 close to human life as to illustrate a preliminary 

 stage for evolution of rational power, we should 

 have expected to find in these animals intelligence 

 operating more markedly than it does in their natural 

 state, independently of human training. In like 

 manner, we should have expected a beginning of 

 liberation from the dominion of natural selection. 

 Organic advance secured under the struggle for 

 existence, which is entailed by short supplies, 

 operates in Nature quite independently of intelli 

 gence. The operation of the law tells on all life as 

 dependent on nutriment. A modification of this law, 

 on appearance of intelligence, is admitted within the 

 terms of the law itself. Natural selection acts only 

 by accumulation of slight modifications of structure 

 or instinct, each profitable to the individual under its 

 conditions of life. 2 Admitting the law, and also varia 

 tions in structure and in instinct under its action, 



1 I have examined the evidence in detail in Relations of Mind 

 and Brain, 3rd edition, pp. 252-258, and 275-280. 



2 Darwin s Origin of Species, p. 211, 



