Cuvier maintained that instinct and intelligence stand in an
inverse ratio to each other; and some have thought that the intellectual
faculties of the higher animals have been gradually developed from their
instincts. But Pouchet, in an interesting essay, has shown that no such
inverse ratio really exists. Those insects which possess the most
wonderful instincts are certainly the most intelligent. In the
vertebrate series, the least intelligent members, namely fishes and
amphibians, do not possess complex instincts; and among mammals the
animal most remarkable for its instincts, namely the beaver, is highly
intelligent, as will be admitted by every one who has read Mr. Morgan's
excellent work.[58]
But although, as we learn from the above-mentioned insects and the
beaver, a high degree of intelligence is certainly compatible with
complex instincts, and although actions, at first learned voluntarily,
can soon through habit be performed with the quickness and certainty of
a reflex action, yet it is not improbable that there is a certain amount
of interference between the development of free intelligence and of
instinct, since the latter implies some inherited modification of the
brain.
Pages:
445
446
447
448
449
450
451
452
453
454
455
456
457
458
459
460
461
462
463
464
465
466
467
468
469