[IR]The experiments, both of Sir John Lubbock and Mr. Romanes, show that the homing instinct of bees is largely the result of individual observation. Taken to the seashore at no great distance from the hive, where the objects around them, however, were unfamiliar (since the seashore is not the place where flowers and nectar are to be found), the bees were nonplussed and lost their way. Similarly, the migration of birds "is now," according to Mr. Wallace, "well ascertained to be effected by means of vision, long flights being made on bright moonlight nights, when the birds fly very high, while on cloudy nights they fly low, and then often lose their way" ("Darwinism," p. 442). This, of course, does not explain the migratory instinct—the internal prompting to migrate—but it indicates that the carrying out of the migratory impulse is, in part at least, intelligent.
[IS]"Animal Intelligence," p. 59.
[IT]The American expression, "I guess," is often far truer to fact than its English equivalent, "I think."
[IU]"Mental Evolution in Animals," pp. 73, 74.
[IV]"Mental Evolution in Animals," p. 177.
[IW]Nature, vol. xxviii. p. 271, quoted in "Mental Evolution in Animals," footnote, p. 196.
[IX]"Organic Evolution," pp. 223, 224.
[IY]Ibid. p. 263.
[IZ]Ibid. p. 303.
[JA]Ibid. p. 258.
[JB]Ibid. p. 279.
[JC]Ibid. p. 276.
[JD]"Organic Evolution," p. 298. The late G. H. Lewes held somewhat similar views.
[JE]See Mr. John Hancock, Natural History Transactions, Northumberland, Durham, and Newcastle-on-Tyne, vol. viii. (1886); and Nature, vol. xxxiii. p. 519.
[JF]Weismann, "On Heredity," p. 91.
[JG]M. Fabre, as interpreted by Sir John Lubbock, "Scientific Lectures," 2nd edit., p. 45.
[JH]In further illustration of the fact that purposiveness and complex adaptation of activities is no criterion of present or past direction by intelligence, we may draw attention to the action of the leucocytes, or white blood-corpuscles. Metchnikoff found that in the water-flea (Daphnia), affected by spores of Monospora bicuspidata, a kind of yeast which passes from the intestinal canal into the body-cavity, the leucocytes attacked and devoured the conidia. If a conidium were too much for one cell, a plasmodium, or compound giant-cell, was formed to repel the invader. The same thing occurs in anthrax, the bacilli being attacked and devoured by the leucocytes. "If we summarize," says Mr. Bland Sutton ("General Pathology," pp. 127, 128), "the story of inflammation as we read it zoologically, it should be likened to a battle. The leucocytes are the defending army, their roads and lines of communication the blood-vessels. Every composite organism maintains a certain proportion of leucocytes as representing its standing army. When the body is invaded by bacilli, bacteria, micrococci, chemical or other irritants, information of the aggression is telegraphed by means of the vaso-motor nerves, and leucocytes rush to the attack; reinforcements and recruits are quickly formed to increase the standing army, sometimes twenty, thirty, or forty times the normal standard. In the conflict, cells die and often are eaten by their companions; frequently the slaughter is so great that the tissue becomes burdened by the dead bodies of the soldiers in the form of pus, the activity of the cell being testified by the fact that its protoplasm often contains bacilli, etc., in various stages of destruction. These dead cells, like the corpses of soldiers who fall in battle, later become hurtful to the organism they were in their lifetime anxious to protect from harm, for they are fertile sources of septicæmia and pyæmia—the pestilence and scourge so much dreaded by operative surgeons." Now, if the leucocytes were separate organisms, whose habits were being described, some might suppose that they were actuated by intelligence, individual or inherited. But in this case the activities are purely physiological. The marshalling of the cells during the growth of tissue (e.g. the antler of a stag before described) is of like import. And Dr. Verworn has shown that when a (presumably weak) electric current is passed through a drop of water containing protozoa, they will, when the current is closed, flock towards the negative pole, and when the current is opened will travel towards the positive pole. The implication of all this is that vital phenomena may be intensely purposive, and yet afford no evidence or indication of the present or ancestral play of intelligence.
[JI]"Origin of Species," p. 230.
[JJ]See Appendix to Mr. Romanes's "Mental Evolution in Animals," p. 361.
[JK]"Organic Evolution," p. 227.
[JL]Ibid. p. 228.
[JM]"Colours of Animals," p. 180.
[JN]Wallace's "Darwinism," p. 109.
[JO]"Mental Evolution in Animals," p. 244.
[JP]"Descent of Man," pt. ii. chap. xiii.
[JQ]George W. and Elizabeth G. Peckham, "Occasional Papers of the Natural History of Wisconsin," vol. i. (1889), p. 37.
[JR]"Mental Evolution in Animals," p. 226.
[JS]"Darwinism," p. 76, from Nature, vol. xxxi. p. 533.
[JT]"Contributions," etc., p. 222.
[JU]"Mental Evolution in Animals," p. 222.
[JV]"On Sheep," p. 404.
[JW]In the sense in which I have used the word; not as he uses it himself.
[JX]"Moral Order and Progress."
[JY]"Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection," p. 365.
[JZ]I consider that an apology is needed for the coinage of this and of two or three other words, such as "construct," "isolate," and "predominant." I can only say that in each case I endeavoured to avoid them, but found that I could not make my meaning clear, or bring out the point I wished to emphasize without them.
[KA]"Science of Thought," pp. 286, 287.
[KB]"Science of Thought," p. 279.
[KC]I use "substance" here in its philosophical sense.
[KD]Quoted in Professor Veitch's "Hamilton," p. 77.
[KE]T. M. Herbert, "The Realistic Assumptions of Modern Science Examined," 2nd edit., p. 123.
[KF]"Science of Thought," p. 571.
[KG]Strictly speaking, of the brain; but since the brain has no organic independence of the body, it is best here to focus attention on the unity of the organism.
[KH]I ought not to pass over without notice the "psychological scale" which Mr. Romanes introduces in a table prefixed to "Mental Evolution in Animals." It would be unjust to criticize this too closely, for it is admittedly provisional and tentative. If such a scheme is to be framed, I would suggest that the various phyla of the animal kingdom be kept distinct. I question, however, whether any one can produce a scheme which any other independent observer will thoroughly endorse. And I am inclined to think that the wisest plan is to tabulate the kinetic manifestations which we can actually observe rather than the metakineses of which we can have no independent knowledge.
[KI]Contemporary Review, July, 1886. See Clifford's "Lectures and Essays," vol. i. pp. 72 and 248; vol. ii. p. 67.
[KJ]Contemporary Review, July, 1886.
[KK]"Darwinism," p. 467.
[KL]In both cases, the question to which an answer is suggested is not—What variations will arise? but—What variations will survive?
[KM]"Darwinism," p. 293. It is strange that Mr. Wallace did not apply this view to the mathematical and artistic faculties discussed in his last chapter. It is true that such application tends to undermine the argument there developed. But Mr. Wallace is far too great and conscientious a thinker to be influenced by such a consideration.
[KN]If elimination of the unintellectual (not necessarily of the unintelligent) may be excluded, and if the unintellectual increase by natural generation more rapidly than the intellectual, the general level of intellectuality must, on Professor Weismann's principles, be steadily falling.
[KO]It may also, in part, be due to "organic combination."