MIMICRY. 119 



term in the ordinary signification as taught to ordinary people — 

 must imply either its existence in the whole animal world, or its 

 gradual evolution* with the specialization of type, both of which 

 premises are outside scientific reasoning, and therefore quite beyond 

 the cognizance of plain folk. To deny conscious intelligence is 

 a corollary to denying immortality to animals, and it is often 

 the desire to monopolise the last that so frequently ensures the 

 denial of the first.f The writer of ' Ecclesiastes ' had nursed the 

 thought — " Who knoweth the spirit of man whether it goeth 

 upward, and the spirit of the beast whether it goeth downward to 

 the earth." 



That animal intelligence is sufficient to prove much mimicry 

 of an active and not of a merely passive character, is abundantly 

 advocated by facts. That an insect or bird should seek and 

 obtain concealment by its own volition, and by a sense of adap- 

 tation in bringing into juxtaposition its own peculiarly-coloured 

 body with some material object with which it closely assimilates, 

 is an exemplification of intellect, though inferior to that shown 

 in the general psychology of Bees, Wasps, and Ants. In Birds 

 it would rank lower than the acquired and more complicated 

 knowledge of the African Honey-bird, which is able to associate 

 the appearance of Man with that of a honey-seeking creature, and 

 to lure and lead him to the nest of the Bee, in order that his 

 assistance and strength may wreck the nest and leave the bird 



* " I believe that the spirit of man was developed out of the anima or 

 conscious principle of animals, and that this, again, was developed out of the 

 lower forms of life-force, and that this in its turn out of the chemical and 

 physical forces of nature ; and that at a certain stage in this gradual 

 development, viz. with man, it acquired the property of immortality pre- 

 cisely as it now, in the individual history of each man at a certain stage, 

 acquires the capacity of abstract thought " (Josh. Le Conte, ' Evolution and 

 its Kelation to Eeligious Thought,' p. 295). 



f The Hon. L. A. Tollemache has contributed some original remarks on 

 this subject : — " I sometimes think that the lower animals bear the same sort 

 of relation to man that the Apocrypha bears to the Bible. Theologians are 

 apt to regard the human soul and the Bible as having a right (so to speak), 

 each in its own way, to say ' Noli me tangere ' to science. The lower 

 animals and (though in a very different manner) the Apocrypha bar such 

 exorbitant claims. They serve as intermediate links, and thus tend to 

 evolutionize Religion. In other words, the lower animals are half-human, 

 just as the Apocrypha is half-Biblical" (' Benjamin Jowett,' p. 37, note). 



