APPLICATION OF FOREGOING PRINCIPLES. 73 



which he thinks he can call unintelligent and in- 

 stinctive. 



I may be mistaken in the impression I have derived 

 from the paragraphs I have quoted. I can only say they 

 give me the impression that I have tried to convey to 

 the reader, i.e., that the writer's assent to anything like 

 intelligence, or consciousness of needs, in an animal 

 low down in the scale of life, is grudging, and that 

 he is more comfortable when he has got hold of one 

 to which he can point and say that here, at any rate, 

 is an unintelligent and merely instinctive creature. 

 I have only called attention to the passage as an 

 example of the intellectual bias of a large number of 

 exceedingly able and thoughtful persons, among whom, 

 so far as I am able to form an opinion at all, few have 

 greater claims to our respectful attention than Dr. 

 Carpenter himself. 



For the embryo of a chicken, then, we claim exactly 

 the same kind of reasoning power and contrivance 

 which we claim for the amoeba, or for our own 

 intelligent performances in later life. We do not 

 claim for it much, if any, perception of its own fore- 

 thought, for we know very well that it is among the 

 most prominent features of intellectual activity that, 

 after a number of repetitions, it ceases to be per- 

 ceived, and that it does not, in ordinary cases, cease 

 to be perceived till after a very great number of 

 repetitions. The fact that the embryo chicken makes 

 itself always as nearly as may be in the same way, 

 would lead us to suppose that it would be unconscious 

 of much of its own action, provided it were always the 



