Heredity, Variation and Genius 103 



sciously as human intelligence has gone on and 

 goes on continuously by organic process in external 

 nature ; that the work done internally in mental 

 organization is actually done organically and un- 

 consciously, consciousness only revealing partially 

 the process and more fully the results ; and that 

 the intelligent operations and effects shown 

 throughout nature, especially by bees, ants and 

 some other creatures, are not essentially altered 

 in nature by having the light of consciousness 

 thrown on them and being translated from instinct 

 into intelligence. It would be improper, no 

 doubt, to project the fully conscious and actively 

 adaptive intelligence of man into their specialized 

 and limited operations ; that would be to find the 

 higher in the lower. But it is quite proper to 

 perceive the foundation and processes of the 

 lower in the higher — to discover in the conscious 

 intelligence of man the working on a higher plane 

 of the same organic processes which have with 

 effortless ease constructed the marvellous ingenui- 

 ties of mechanism seen in the structures of plants 

 and animals, anticipating therein many inventions 

 which he has consciously made and many others 

 which he yet hopes and strives to make* ; which 

 have fashioned their several instincts in the lower 



* Not that some of these elaborate mechanisms might not 

 apparently have been much simplified. It certainly looks as if 

 nature had proceeded experimentally through failures and 

 successes to reach its end, sometimes in circuitous and clumsy 

 ways. 



