HABIT, INSTINCT, AND INTELLIGENCE. 161 



The conditions of amelioration under domestication do not differ in kind from those 

 presented in nature. Domestication merely bunches nature's opportunities and thus 

 concentrates results in forms accessible to observation. Natural conditions are certainly 

 working in the same direction, only more slowly. The direction and the method of progress 

 must, in the nature of things, remain essentially the same. 



Nature works to the same ends as intelligence, and to the natural course of events I 

 should look for just such results as Lloyd Morgan 1 so clearly pictures and ascribes to intel- 

 ligence: He says 



"Suppose the modifications are of various kinds and in various directions, and that, associated 

 with the instinctive activity, a tendency to modify it i>ltji>iitch/ be inherited. I nder such circum- 

 stances intelligence would have a tendency to break up and ri'inlcr plastic a previously stereotyped instinct; 

 for the instinctive character of the activities is maintained through the constancy and uniformity 

 of their performance. But if the normal activities were thus caused to vary in different directions 

 in different individuals, the offspring arising from the union of these differing individuals would be 

 imperfect, and there would be an inherited tendency to vary. And this, if continued, would tend to 

 convert what had been a stereotyped instinct into innate capacity; that is, a general li-ndi-nci/ t/> cn-tnin 

 activities (mental or bodily), the exact form and direction of which are not fixed, until by training, from 

 imitation or through the guidance of individual intelligence, it became habitual. 'Thus it may be tl/ut 

 it has come about that man, with his enormous store of innate capacity, has so small a number of stereo- 

 typed instincts." 



The following from Professor James 2 is suggestive: 



"Nature implants contrary impulses to act on many classes of things, and leaves it to slight 

 alterations in the conditions of the individual case to decide which impulse shall carry the day. 

 Thus, greediness and suspicion, curiosity and timidity, coyness and desire, bashfulness and vanity, 

 sociability and pugnacity seem to shoot over into each other as quickly, and to remain in as unstable 

 equilibrium, in the higher birds and mammals as in man. They are all impulses, congenital, blind 

 at first, and productive of motor reactions of a rigorously determinate sort. Each one of them, then, 

 is an instinct, as instinct is commonly defined. But they contradict each other; experience, in each 

 particular opportunity of application, usually deciding the issue. The animal that exhibits them loses 

 the "instinctive" demeanor and appears to lead a life of hesitation and choice, an intellectual life; not, 

 however, because he has no instincts rather because he has so many that they block each other's path." 



Looking only to the more salient points of direction and method in nature's advance 

 towards intelligence, the general course of events may be briefly adumbrated. Organic 

 mechanisms capable of doing teleological work through blindly determined adjustments, 

 reproduced congenitally and carried to various degrees of complexity and inflexibility of 

 action, were first evolved. With the organization of instinctive propensities, liable to 

 antagonistic stimulation, came both the possibility and the provocation to choice. In 

 the absence of intelligent motive, choice would stand for the outcome of conflicting impulses. 

 The power of blind choice could be transmitted, and that is what man himself begins with. 



Superiority in instinct endowments and concurring advantages of environment would 

 tend to liberate the possessors from the severities of natural selection; and thus nature, 

 like domestication, would furnish conditions inviting to greater freedom of action, and 

 with the same result, namely, that the instincts would become more plastic and tractable. 

 Plasticity of instinct is not intelligence, but it is the open door through which the great 

 educator, experience, comes in and works every wonder of intelligence. 



Spencer 3 has shown clearly that this plasticity must inevitably result from the pro- 

 gressive complication of the instincts. He says: 



That progressive complication of the instincts which, as we have found, involves a progressive diminu- 

 tion of their purely automatic character, likewise involves a simultaneous commencement of memory and 

 reason. 



'Animal Life and Intelligence, pp. 452, 453. 2 Psychology, II, pp. 392. 393. 'Psychology, I, pp. 443 and 454, 455. 



