ANIMAL AND PLANT INTELLIGENCE 



instinct to account for their acts — that natural 

 " propensity," as Paley defined it, which is " prior 

 to experience and independent of instruction." 



In both the animal and vegetable worlds we see 

 a kind of intelligence that we are always tempted 

 to describe in terms of our own intelligence; it 

 seems to run parallel to and to foreshadow our own 

 as to ways and means and getting on in the world 

 — propagation, preservation, dissemination, adap- 

 tation — the plant resorting to many ingenious 

 devices to scatter its seed and to secure cross-fertili- 

 zation; the animal eluding its enemies, hiding its 

 door or its nest, finding its way, securing its food, 

 and many other things — all exhibiting a kind of 

 intelligence that is independent of instruction or 

 experience, and that suggests human reason with- 

 out being one with it. Each knows what its kind 

 knows, and each does what its kind does, but only in 

 man do we reach self-knowledge and the freedom 

 of conscious intelligence. 



The animals all profit more or less by experience, 

 and this would at first thought seem to imply some 

 sort of mental capacity. But vegetables profit by 

 experience also, and mainly in the same way, by 

 increasing power to live and multiply. Hunt an 

 animal and it becomes wary and hardy; persecute 

 a plant and it, too, seems to tighten its hold upon 

 life. How hardy and prolific are the weeds against 

 which every man's hand is turned! How full of 

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