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intelligent and also successful, it would become the object
of imitation by others.
Nor is it possible that Natural Selection should be
required to complete what intelligence had begun. For
Natural Selection works by life and death, and it is
difficult to understand how the intelligent animal which
had faced previous crises with success should yield itself,
the passive victim of fate, at any subsequent period of
its history.
(4) The fourth way of explaining how Natural Selection
can act in the development of instincts so as to escape the
interference of intelligence, is to assume that the intelligent
animal may be unobservant of certain actions which are
not intelligently performed, and are not of an adaptive
character, but which are nevertheless inherited and fixed in
the race. Mr. Romanes says that one mode of the origin
of instincts
“consists in Natural Selection, or survival of the fittest, con
tinuously preserving actions which, although never intelligent, yet
happen to have been of benefit to the animals which first chanced
to perform them.”—(.Mental Evolution in Animals, p. /77.)
The proof which he gives of this assertion is:—
“ 1. That non-intelligent habits of a non-adaptive character occur
in individuals. 2. That such habits may be inherited. 3. That such
habits may vary. 4. That when they vary the variations may be
inherited. 5. That if such variations are inherited we are justified in
assuming, in view of all that we know concerning the analogous case
of structures, that they may be fixed and intensified in beneficial
lines by Natural Selection.”—{Ibid. p. /So.)
It should be observed that the selection of non-intelli
gent habits of a non-adaptive character is cited as a proof
of the selection of actions which, although never intelligent,
yet happen to have been of benefit to the animals that
first used them ! The two expressions are not identical,
unless we interpret habits of a non-adaptive character