April 10, 1896.] 



SCIENGE. 



561 



The question is too involved for treatment 

 here; but the assumption that intelligence is 

 necessary in any sense which make the conscious 

 voluntary performance of the action always pre- 

 cede the reflex performance of it is very difficult 

 to defend. For all that we know of the brain 

 seat of voluntary intelligence, of the use of 

 means to ends, etc. , makes such action depend- 

 ent in its origin upon the presence of the 

 great mass of organic reflex processes which go 

 on below the cortex. Complex associative pro- 

 cesses must be genetically (and phylogeneti- 

 cally) later than the simple reflex processes, 

 which, as has been intimated above, they pre- 

 suppose. 



But the more liberal definition of intelligence, 

 which makes it include all kinds of conscious 

 pi'ocesses — the assumption of intelligence being 

 the assumption of conscious process of some 

 kind — that is a different matter. This supposi- 

 tion seems to be necessary on either theory of 

 instinct, as I have argued;* for if we do not 

 assume it, then natural selection is inadequate, 

 as say Romanes and Cope; but if we do assume 

 it, then the inheritance of acquired characters 

 is unnecessary. On this simpler definition of 

 intelligence, however, we find certain simpler 

 states of consciousness, of which imitation is the 

 most prominent example, serving nature a 

 turn in the matter of development. 



And on this wider view of intelligence the 

 difference between intelligent {i. e., imitative) 

 action and instinctive reflex action is much 

 greater than that pointed out in detail above 

 between voluntary and reflex action. , A word 

 to show this may be allowed me, since it makes 

 yet stronger the case against the special argu- 

 ment from selective fitness, which this paper 

 set out to examine. 



The differences between imitative action and 

 reflex or instinctive action are not just those 

 which we have found between voluntary and re- 

 flex actions. Imitation seems to be in a sense in- 

 stinctive ; and in the animals it seems to be, 

 like the instincts, peripherally initiated. But 



' * See my article ' Consciousness and Evolution, ' 

 examining some parts of Prof. Cope's position, in 

 Science, August 23, '9,5, reprinted kindly by him in 

 the American Naturalist, March, '96, Txith reply in the 

 succeeding issue of the latter journal. 



it has a farther point of difl^erentiation from the 

 special instincts and reflexes, in that it is what 

 has been called a 'circular' reaction, i. e., it 

 tends to reproduce the stimulus again — the 

 movement seen, the sound heard, etc. There is 

 always a certain comparability or similarity, in 

 a case of conscious imitation, between the thing- 

 imitated and the imitator's result; and the imi- 

 tation is unmistakably such in proportion as 

 this similarity is real. We may say, therefore, 

 that consciously imitative actions are confined 

 to those certain channels of discharge with pro- 

 duce results comparable with the ' copy ' which 

 is imitated. 



But the special instincts and reflexes are not 

 so. They show the greatest variety of arrange- 

 ment between the stimulus and the movement 

 which results from it — arrangements which have 

 grown up under the law of utility. They repre- 

 sent therefore special utilities Avhich direct con- 

 scious imitation iu each case, by the individual 

 creature, could not secure; while conscious im- 

 itation represents a general utility more akin 

 to that which we have seen the voluntary intel- 

 ligence subserving. 



If this be so, then we have to say that con- 

 scious imitation, while it prevents the incidence 

 of natural selection, as has been seen, and so 

 keeps alive the creatures which have no in- 

 stincts for the performance of the actions re- 

 quired, nevertheless does not subserve the utili- 

 ties which the special instincts do, nor prevent 

 them from having the selective value of which 

 Romanes speaks. Accordingly, on the more 

 general definition of intelligence, which includes 

 in it all conscious imitation, use of maternal in- 

 struction, and that sort of thing (the vehicle of 

 ' social heredity ') — no less than on the more 

 special definition spoken of above — we still find 

 the principal of natural selection operative and 

 adequate, possibly, to the production of instincts 

 and reflexes." 



J. Mark Baldwin. 



Princeton, March 17, 1896. 



*This and the two preceding pai^ers in this jour- 

 nal are no't intended as more than preliminary state- 

 ments of results thrown into the form of criticisms of 

 particular vieTvs (i. c, Romanes' and Prof. Cope's). 

 For this reason I have not brought in reference to the 

 general literature of the subject. 



