286 ANIMAL INTELLIGENCE 



the contrary, his whole treatise is confined to human 

 personality, and, among human beings, only the elect, 

 as it were; those who have begun to realise their 

 latent privileges. He compares the process of super- 

 sensory development to the primitive stages of animal 

 evolution, when the pigment spot on the skin of some 

 rudimentary organism first became sensitised to light, 

 and the creature received a novel sensation. 



The frontier between human beings and other 

 creatures can only be drawn dogmatically and, so to 

 speak, irrationally. Their characteristics and actions 

 blend imperceptibly. Rather than accept Mr. Myers's 

 exclusive doctrine, it is easier for minds accustomed to 

 ponder upon the behaviour of animals to be frankly 

 teleological, and to admit the probability of a Supreme 

 Being and His invisible ministers communicating 

 decrees regulating their conduct through a medium 

 of which none is more than dimly and speculatively 

 conscious. 



Assuming a First Cause, instinctive activities in the 

 lower animals may be regarded as the comparatively 

 simple and intelligible results of forces initiated by 

 him, acting unerringly in prescribed directions by means 

 of co-ordinate organs modified by evolution. It is in 

 accordance with the plan of nature that, in their 

 performance of instinctive activities, certain insects 

 should unconsciously take an indispensable part in the 

 fertilisation of flowers specially adapted to take advan- 

 tage of their visits. An extreme instance, infinitely 

 more bewildering, presents itself when the preservation 

 of the race of both insect and plant depends upon 



