EDWAED BURGESS. 81 



adaptation is usually gradual and inevitably follows 

 from the law of natural selection. But even if self- 

 preservation depends upon it, it implies variability, the 

 power to change when circumstances require it, and it is 

 this power which has diversified the earth with such 

 varied forms of animal life. Inability to do this ex- 

 plains why so many species of animals have become 

 extinct. Very few owe their disappearance from the 

 earth to the destructive hand of man. Their extinction 

 has resulted from their incompetency to alter their modes 

 of life so as to harmonize them with their constantly 

 changing surroundings. Others better adapted to the 

 new conditions have taken their place. And in this 

 way nature offers a perpetual premium upon intelligence 

 — the least intelligent unequal to the severe competition 

 disappear — the more intelligent survive. It is not then 

 so extraordinary that this sifting process which has con- 

 tinued through countless generations should not only 

 have developed such wonderful instincts which primarily 

 owe their origin to intelligent adaptations, but should 

 also have developed that very faculty which makes a new 

 instinct possible. In obedience then to the law of na- 

 tional selection and an inevitable consequence of it, this 

 intelligence has arisen. It is such an irresistible logical 

 deduction from that law that its absence would be the 

 startling thing. What is it that gives to man his 

 superiority as a member of this material world? What 

 bat this very intelligence — this power of reason — this 

 capacity to think and to contrive and so make this 

 material world serve his purposes. He has developed in 

 this direction to such an extent and has so far out- 

 stripped every other organic form, that in the pride of 

 conscious superiority, he has come to think that intelli- 

 gence is his exclusive possession ; that while animals 

 possess instincts that are inherited and upon which they 

 are dependent, he alone is independent of instincts and 



37 



