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the blind instinct makes a mistake and the young chicken 
pecks at its own excrement, we see by its action that it 
is perfectly aware of the mistake that it has made and 
the necessity of exercising a certain amount of self-control. 
Professor C. Lloyd Morgan, after making many experi 
ments on instinct in chicks and ducklings, comes to the 
conclusion that— 
“The inherited activities on their first performance are not guided 
by consciousness, though they are probably accompanied by con 
sciousness. The rôle oi consciousness is that of control and guidance. 
Only on the first performance of an inherited activity is the chick a 
conscious automaton. In so far as the activity is subsequently 
modified and perfected by intelligence, the agent exercises conscious 
control.”—(.Natural Science, vol. ivft. 213.) 
The most prominent writers on the evolution of instinct 
by Natural Selection are necessarily convinced believers in 
the principle of evolution. Darwin and Romanes also hold 
that some animals are intelligent, and that their instinctive 
action is often modified by what Pierre Huber calls “a 
little dose of judgment or reason.” Hence the problem 
which we have now therefore to discuss narrows itself to 
this point. The principle of organic evolution is assumed 
to be true. It is admitted that some animals are intelligent 
beings. Under these conditions we have to enquire what 
proof can be adduced in favour of the assertion that 
instincts have arisen, or have been developed, through the 
agency of Natural Selection. In answering this enquiry, 
the fact of animal intelligence is most important, for two 
reasons. In the first place the intelligent animal is neces 
sarily conscious of the significance of the instinctive 
actions which it performs. Dr. Martineau, who does not 
believe that animals are intelligent, clearly sees what would 
follow if they were. 
“The difference between man and his companion creatures on 
this earth is not that his instinctive life is less than theirs ; but