Address of John L, LeConte. 253 
are not warranted in assuming that these actions are in- 
stinctive, site if performed by a vertebrate, we would call 
ationa tead of concealing our ignorance under a word 
which Gheaa acd comes to mean nothing, let us rather admit 
the existence here of a rational power, not only inferior to 
ours, bile also different. 
, proceeding from the highest forms in each type of 
‘iieal’ life to the lower, and even : down to the lowest, we ma 
be prepared to advance the thesis that all animals are intelh- 
gent in proportion to the ability of their organization to mani- 
fest intelligence to us, or to each other; that wherever there is 
voluntary motion there is intelligence, obscure, it may be, not 
comprehended by us, but comprehended by the companions of 
the same low grade of structure. 
However this may be, ] do not intend to discuss the subject 
at present, but only wish, in connection with this train of 
thought, to offer two suggestion 8. 
The first is that, by pursuing different courses of investiga- 
tion in biology, we may be led to opposite results. Commenc- 
ing with the simplest forms of animal life, or with the embryo 
of the higher animals, it may be very difficult to say at what 
point intelligence begins to manifest itself; our attention is 
n 
by external stimuli. The animal becomes to our perception 
an automaton, and, in fact, by exercising some of the nervous 
organs last developed in its growth, we can render an adult 
animal an automaton, capable of performing only those habit- 
ual actions to which its brain, when in perfect condition, ha 
educated the muscles of voluntary motion. On the other hand, 
commencing with the highest group in each type, and going 
downward, either in structural complication, or in age of indi- 
vidual, it is impossible to fix the limit at which intelligence 
ceases to be apparen 
I have in this subject, as in that of tracing the past history 
of our insects, in the first part of this address, preferred the 
latter mode of investigation: taking those things which are 
nearest to us in time or structure, as a basis for the study of 
those more remote. 
The second consideration is, since it is so difficult for us to 
understand the mental processes, whether eepireeh or instine- 
tive (I care not by what name they are called) of beings more 
or less similar, but inferior to — we yee a 
great caution when we have occasion to speak of t 
of One who is infinitely greater. Let us give no pce to the 
men Binds gg of would-be teleologists, who are, indeed, 
great part refuted already by the progress of ncaa etiah 
