CHAPTER XIII. 



HABIT, INSTINCT, AND INTELLIGENCE. 



In this chapter the editor has grouped under appropriate topics all those obser- 

 vations of activities in which the effect of previous Experience is evident. The 

 material is thus significant from the standpoint of learning, habit formation, and 

 intelligence. For the final topic we have added a selection from a lecture which 

 states in a very succinct form the author's view of the relation of intelligence to 

 instinct. Intelligence, according to Whitman, is not a power, force, or faculty; 

 it is the capacity to learn, to form habits, to profit from previous experience. 

 Instincts are not always perfect; they have faults or deficiencies, they may conflict 

 or interfere with each other. They are not absolutely stereotyped or invariable 

 in their expression, but are plastic or variable to some degree. Intelligence is the 

 capacity to learn, to adjust to novel or variable conditions, and hence is a result 

 of this plastic and variable aspect of instinctive organization. As to the meaning 

 of "memory," the author follows rather consistently the biological usage of the term. 

 To the biologist, memory is the capacity to form habits, and any act exhibits 

 "memory" in so far as it is the resultant of previous experience. Memory is "thus 

 equivalent to intelligence. Some readers may prefer a more restricted usage 

 of the term, but questions of terminology are relatively unimportant in compari- 

 son with questions of fact and interpretation. 



Pigeons are generally regarded as rather stupid creatures, but every organism 

 is relatively stupid along certain lines and relatively intelligent in other respects. 

 As the author states in a footnote in this chapter, an animal may exhibit a good 

 memory for certain activities and a poor memory for others. Pigeons are unutter- 

 ably stupid from some standpoints. They may injure their young in feeding them, 

 cast the young bird from the nest along with the shells, and incubate, day after 

 day, an empty nest. Yet pigeons do learn quite a variety of things, and some acts 

 are mastered with a surprising degree of readiness. Besides the material given 

 in this chapter, other illustrations of learning capacity have been noted in the 

 summaries of Chapters IX, XI, and XII. A perusal of this material should con- 

 vince the reader that the pigeon is not altogether stupid, that intelligent capacity 

 does exist, that certain acts are learned very quickly, but that this intelligence is 

 manifested only in certain situations and for certain types of activity. For con- 

 venience these powers may be roughly grouped in several classes: 



(1) The capacity to acquire habits of reacting to the position aspect of objects 

 is noteworthy. In this respect pigeons are not different from most other animals, 

 for this power is deeply seated and widely distributed in animal life. For the 

 prevalence and significance of this gift we may offer the following suggestions: 

 Among active animals endowed with strong powers of locomotion their position 

 in reference to the topography of the country is of necessity highly variable. Many 

 animals are so organized that certain fixed positions are essential to many of their 



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