164 A PHILOSOPHER WITH NATURE 



good imitation resulted. The instinct was, in 

 short, an example of those more or less perfect 

 but unconscious and mechanical adjustments to the 

 conditions of existence that we have been already 

 discussing. Romanes, however, went further than 

 this ; he agreed in the main with Darwin's view as 

 to the origin of the instinct, but he held that direct 

 intelligence in misleading an enemy now played a 

 considerable part in the exercise of this peculiar 

 habit on the part of the mother wild duck. 



I am inclined to think that this view of Romanes 

 is correct, and that there may be conscious, delibe- 

 rate, and individual intention on the part of the 

 mother to deceive, and so to adjust her actions 

 as to cover the retreat of her young. Experiments 

 which I have made since this article was begun with 

 wild ducks which I have tamed, have, however, led 

 me to think that there is a physical cause for the 

 action, and that the conscious purpose may be only 

 secondary. I have purposely chosen this example 

 because it well illustrates the way in which an 

 instinct of the lowest class merges into a higher 

 order of intelligence. But I have also noticed it 

 because it gives us a probable clue, to be referred to 

 presently, as to the conditions favourable to the 

 display of individual intelligence in animals in a 

 large class of examples that attract attention. 



As we rise in the scale of animal intelligence, 

 there are two leading facts which have to be noticed. 

 In the first place, it has to be observed that the 

 organized mechanical response to stimuli which has 

 been so far described, and which constitutes instinct 

 in its lowest form, becomes replaced by something 

 higher. We begin to have conscious intelligence 



