204 Animal Intelligence 
faculty, for we could put together the gist of our contention 
in a few words. We should say: — 
“The function of intellect is to provide a means of modi- 
fying our reactions to the circumstances of life, so that we 
may secure pleasure, the symptom of welfare. Its general 
law is that when in a certain situation an animal acts so 
that pleasure results, that act is selected from all those per- 
formed and associated with that situation, so that, when 
the situation recurs, the act will be more likely to follow than — 
it was before; that on the contrary the acts which, when 
performed in a certain situation, have brought discomfort, 
tend to be dissociated from that situation. !_The intellectual 
evolution of the race consists in an increase in the number, 
delicacy, complexity, permanence and speed of formation 
of such associations. |, In man this increase reaches such a 
point that an apparently new type of mind results, which 
conceals the real continuity of the process. This mental 
evolution parallels the evolution of the cell structures of 
the brain from few and simple and gross to many and 
complex and delicate.” | 
Nowhere more truly than in his mental capacities is man 
a part of nature. ' His instincts, that is, his inborn tendencies 
to feel and act in certain ways, show throughout marks of 
kinship with the lower animals, especially with our nearest 
relatives physically, the monkeys. His sense-powers show 
no new creation. !}His intellect we have seen to be a 
simple though extended variation from the general animal 
sort. This again is presaged by the similar variation 
in the case of the monkeys. Amongst the minds of animals 
that of man leads, not as a demigod from another planet, 
but as a king from the same race. | 
