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Show 172 DARWINIAN A. of about as carefully and skillfully as the unplumed biped does an eccaleobion.1 • • As to the real intelligence of the htgher brutes, It . has been ably defended by a far mor~ compete~t observer, Mr . .Agassiz, to whose conclusiOns we yield a general assent although we cannot quite place the best of dogs "in ~hat respect upon a ~ev~; with. a considerable proportiOn of poor humanity, nor Indu~ge the hope, or indeed the desire, of a r.enewed acq:1au~tance with the whole animal kingdom m a future hfe. The assertion that acquired habitudes or instincts, and acquired structures, are not heritable, any breeder or good observer can refute.s That" the human mind has become what it is out of a developed instinct," 4 is a statement which Mr. Darwin nowhere makes, and, we presume, would not accept.~ That be would have us believe that individ- 1 Vide Edinbu?'f!h Review for January, 1860, article on" Acclimatization," etc. 2 "Contributions, Essay on Classification," etc., vol. i., pp. 60-66. 3 Still stronger assertions have recently been hazarded-even that heritability is of species only, not of individual characteristicsstrangely overlooking the fundamental peculiarity of plants and animals, which is that they reproduce, and that the species is continued as such only because individuals reproduce their like. It has also been urged that variation is never cumulative. If this means that varieties are not capable of further variation, it is not borne out by observation. For cultivators and breeders well know that the main difficulty is to initiate a variation, and that new varieties are particularly prone to vary more. 4 North .Ame·rican Review, April, 1860, p. 475. 5 No doubt he would equally distinguish in kind between in.~finct (which physiologically is best conceived of as congenital habit, so that habits when inherited become instincts, just as varieties become fixed DARWIN .AND HIS REVIEWERS. 173 ual animals ~cquire their instincts gradua11y,t is a statement wbwh must have been penned in inad vertence both of the very definition of instinct and of everything we know of in Mr. Darwin's book: It has been attempted to destroy the very foundation of Darwin's hypothesis by denying that there are any wild varieties, to speak of, for natural sel.ection to operate upon. We cannot gravely sit down to prove that wild varieties abound. We should think it just as necessary to prove that snow falls in winter. That variation among plants cannot be largely due to hy-into races) and intelligence; but would maintain that both are endowments of the higher brutes and of man, however vastly and unequal their degree, and with whatever superaddition to simple intelligence in the latter. [Prof. Joseph LeConte, in PoruL.A.R SCIENCE MoNTHLY, September, 1875, refers to his definition of instinct as "inherited experience" publish~d in April; 1871, as having been anticipated by that of Herin~, as "inherited memory," in February of the same year. Doubtless the idea has been expressed by others long before us.] To allow that "brutes have -certain mental endowments in common with men," .... desires, affections, memory, simple imagination or the power of reproducing the sensible past in mental pictures, and even judgment of the simple or intuitive kind"-that " they compare and judge'·' ("Memoirs of American Academy," vol. viii., p. 118)-is to concede that the intellect of brutes really acts, so far as we know, like human intellect, as far it goes; for the philosophical logicians tell us all reasoning is reducible to a series of simple judgments. And Aristotle declares that even reminiscence-which is, we suppose, "reproducing the sensible past in mental pictures "-is a sort of reasoning ( 'Tb &vap.tp.VfJO'ICE08a.{ tO''TIII OlOII O'Vl\.71.oytO'p.6s 'TIS). On the other hand, Mr. Darwin's expectation that "psychology will be based on a new foundation, that of the necessary acquirement of each mental power and. capacity by gradation," seems to come from a school of philosophy with which we have no sympathy. 1 .American Journal of Science, July, 1860, p. 146. |