3H MIND IN EVOLUTION CHAP. 



would appear that the operations implying attachment 

 to the young as an individual are peculiar to classes 

 of animals in which there is independent evidence of the 

 higher grade of intelligence, i.e., the higher insects, birds, 

 and mammals. In the lower grades, as among some 

 molluscs, the eggs are so far attended to as to be 

 fastened to an appropriate spot. 1 And among some 

 fish, there are cases in which this is done with a 

 certain adaptive skill and care. 2 But the feeding of the 

 living young is confined to the higher classes mentioned ; 

 and in these classes, and in these exclusively, are found 

 instances of the more complicated parental care implied 

 in the training of the young, and their protection at 

 the risk of the parent. 



These facts when put together appear significant. It 

 is in the classes which appear most intelligent, and there- 

 fore most capable of recognising the young, and of 

 understanding their needs, that we find the rudiments 

 of an individual attention first appearing ; and we know 

 that this individual attention, though instinctive in its 

 basis, is not wholly blind in its operation. Is it too 

 much to infer that the working of the parental instinct 

 implies a recognition of the young which is something 

 more than an automatic reaction, and a desire to satisfy 

 them which is not wholly blind ? 



3. Animal morality. 



The higher animals lead a social life, not only in the 

 sense that they congregate together like swarms of 

 gnats or shoals of fish, but in the sense that they have 

 social or family relations with one another. In these 

 relations, acts of mutual help or forbearance are involved, 

 and it is out of acts of mutual help and forbearance 

 that morality as we know it among men is built up. 

 Are we then to attribute morality to animals ? Have 

 we a right to praise or blame them, to apply to them 

 epithets carrying a moral significance ? This question, so 

 far as it is not a question of words, will be found to 

 resolve itself into the question of the degree of intelli- 

 gence which we impute to animals. Their behaviour 

 * Op. tit, p. 267. 3 E.g. sharks ; op. tit. p. 273. 



