xvin ORGANISATION AND EVOLUTION 423 



4. So far of organisation generally. There is further 

 evidence, general and special, for the efficiency of the two 

 higher developments of organisation Intelligence and the 

 Social Life. The efficiency of Intelligence is best measured 

 by contrasting it with that of Instinct the next highest 

 stage of organisation reached in the organic world. After 

 what has been said, a single reflection will make clear the 

 superiority of Intelligence. Under natural selection In- 

 stinct is made and kept perfect only by the ruthless 

 elimination of the majority of individuals. Any diminu- 

 tion in the severity of the struggle will tend to diminish 

 the perfection of the instruments by which it is waged. 

 The species under such circumstances, far from dominating 

 nature, is still struggling for existence, and only its most 

 capable members survive. The condition of their survival 

 is not organised co-operation, but internecine struggle with 

 one another and with the rest of the world. If from the 

 maintenance of Instinct we go back to its growth, we find 

 its inefficiency as compared with that of intelligence in 

 the slowness and indirectness of adaptation to novel 

 circumstances, and in the consequent waste of individual 

 life during the process. Whatever advance there is pro- 

 ceeds at a rate which we may call geological. It requires 

 in all probability generations to perfect itself, and once 

 perfected it sticks. Compared with such sluggishness, 

 the social changes which appear to us slow enough are 

 as the express train to the stage wagon. Between the 

 England of Alfred's time and the England of to-day 

 how many changes of specific value would an accurate 

 sociological classification have to admit ? The reason of 

 the difference is very simple. Whatever its end, intelligence 

 sees it in advance, and goes towards it as straight as 

 circumstances permit. Natural selection, or whatever 

 other biological force is responsible for instinct, does not 

 see its goal at all, but merely favours the breed which 

 most nearly approaches it, and by the preponderance 

 of success in that direction, the species is at length trans- 

 formed as a whole into a new type. Thus the replacement 

 of instinct by intelligence as the guide of life means a 

 complete revolution in the rate of change. There may be 



