vii ASSIMILATION AND READJUSTMENT 133 



we are to attribute sensation, feeling and perception to 

 animals as to man, -may always be made a question, seeing 

 that the consciousness of another can never be a matter of 

 direct observation. But that animals do succeed in 

 correlating their experiences in the sense explained is not 

 a hypothesis, but a matter of observed fact. W- e regard 

 correlation as the precise work of intelligence, and we 

 therefore set down this elementary correlation as the first 

 stage beyond Instinct in the Evolution of Mind, whether 

 among animals or Man. Its operation is probably con- 

 fined principally to adjusting reactions suitably to their 

 immediate results. If more remote correlations are 

 effected, it must be by a very slow and gradual process. 

 The reactions effected are either those resulting from 

 instincts of a more or less indefinite character, or are such 

 as lead to the immediate gratification of instinctive needs. 

 In the first case, experience tends to define, limit, and 

 direct a more or less general instinct. In the second, it 

 assists in the satisfaction of instinct. In either case it 

 helps to increase the plasticity of instinct and the adapt- 

 ability of the organism, while in rendering it possible 

 for animals to thrive without highly definite instincts, it 

 helps to bring about the substitution of more or less 

 general tendencies and impulses for narrowly defined 

 methods of reaction. And this, to conclude, means the 

 rise of a fuller and more varied type, ready to respond to 

 its surroundings in more diverse ways. Specialisation in 

 nerve structure begins to give way to the general power of 

 adaptation and acquisition whereby in the course of a life- 

 time many diverse actions may become as perfect as the 

 two or three highly elaborated adjustments of the more 

 mechanical type. 



1 1 . ^The diffusion of the lower form of Intelligence in the 

 animal world. 



He would be a bold man who should undertake to say 

 where the capacity for learning by experience first appears 

 in the animal world, or where it first begins to develop 

 into a higher form than that described. There is, however, 

 some reason to think that this grade of intelligence is 

 typical of the lower classes of the animal kingdom, from 



