WHAT IS INTELLIGENCE? 173 



transmit the information is not working. If a person at 

 a distance saw a man standing on the road with a gun, 

 and a lion coming toward him, and this man made no ef- 

 fort to shoot or to get away, the person would declare that 

 the man was crazy and not possessed of any intelligence ; 

 and yet the man, or the cells of his brain, would be just as 

 intelligent as ever. 



To further illustrate, if a submarine should start out 

 from Germany and by accident should destroy its head- 

 lights and periscope, it would not be likely that it would 

 get back home without being destroyed by an English 

 cruiser or battleship. When it came to the surface for 

 air, like the whale, it could not tell whether it was near 

 an English destroyer or not, nor could it see the dangers 

 ahead, when starting towards the steel nets stretched out 

 ahead of it. . 



There is no difference whatever in the purpose and 

 functions of the periscope of the submarine and the eye 

 of a man, animal, or fish. The man at the other end of the 

 periscope gets a picture of the situation in the outside 

 world and from this picture he thinks, reasons and decides 

 what to do. If the battleship is too near, he orders the 

 different acts to be done by the parties in charge of the 

 propellers and rudders, in order to escape the enemy. In 

 the same way, in man the brain cells at the other end of 

 the eye get a picture of the situation and if they observe 

 an enemy approaching, or too near, they order immediate 

 action so as to get out of danger. The same is true of a 

 fish. like a submarine, it would order the cells in charge 

 of the propelling apparatus and rudder to action to move 

 to a place of safety and away from the enemy. 



This should clearly illustrate the proposition that the 

 senses are instruments which are constructed for a special 

 purpose of obtaining and transmitting information from 



