310 THE EVOLUTION OF ANIMAL BEHAVIOUR 
the neural situation would remain unchanged. They are the 
very same thing from different points of view; and to say 
there is no influential conscious situation is simply equivalent 
to saying that there is not this determining neural situation. 
However we explain the fact, there are few who hesitate 
to accept it for the purposes of scientific explanation. The 
conscious situation, having no doubt for the physiologist a 
neural aspect if he could only get at it as a whole, does 
practically determine the behaviour of the animal which has 
gained the requisite experience. If we accept the fact, we 
may pass on to its importance in securing the biological end 
of race preservation. 
It is a commonplace of evolutionary doctrine that, other 
things being equal, those races will survive, in the constituent 
members of which intelligent behaviour enables them to deal 
most effectually with an environment of increasing complexity. 
And it is a matter of familiar observation that such behaviour 
is closely connected with delicacy and refinement of develop- 
ment in those senses which take the lead in cognitional process, 
and with rapidity and precision in the motor co-ordination 
through which prompt and skilful advantage is taken of the 
situation which has, through experience, acquired meaning. 
But though the importance of intelligent adjustment to 
the circumstances of life is widely admitted as a general 
principle, it is perhaps through a study of animal behaviour 
that we are best able to realize its full range and extent. 
Biologists are so largely, and quite wisely, occupied in the 
study of morphological and physiological problems, which 
admit of a treatment more exact than the most ardent 
advocate of the investigation of behaviour, under natural 
or even under experimental conditions, can claim ; they devote, 
again quite rightly, so large a share of attention to the 
variation and natural selection of adaptive structure in its 
adult condition and embryonic stages; the pendulum of 
opinion has, under the teaching of Professor Weismann, 
swung so far in the direction of the non-acceptance of the 
hereditary transmission of characters individually acquired 
