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the evolution of instinct by means of Natural Selection.
In this argument there is no question of the actual in
telligence of the race or of the potential intelligence of the
individual, should life be spared. It only asserts that there
is a period in early life when the young animal has not yet
become intelligent. In reply to this contention, we may
remark that the emergence of intelligence in any in
dividual does not depend altogether on the grade in the
zoological scale, so much as it does on the stage of develop
ment which an animal has attained at birth. The birds
which are hatched in a tree are in a less advanced stage
than the birds which are hatched in a nest situated on the
ground. But the less developed animals are reared under
the care of intelligent and devoted parents, who supplement
instinctive tendency with training and instruction ; and it
would be rash to assume that there was any considerable
period when the lives so cared for remained unintelligent.
“ Easy the lesson of the youthful train,
When instinct prompts and when example guides.”
—(The Chase. Book iv., lines 128-9.)
But it is obvious that this explanation does not account
for some instinctive actions. The existing organism of
the mammalia being what it is, it would be impossible for
the young mammal to learn the art of sucking. It would
perish if it could not perform that most complicated
operation at once. The explanation is that it repeats in a
perfect manner the operation which its remote ancestry
gradually acquired.
“ The ancestors of all the mammalia are said by evolutionists to
have been marsupials or pouched animals. When we investigate
the early life of these creatures we find that the young marsupial
is born in a very imperfect state of development, so that special
arrangements have to be made to secure its existence. The mother
apparently employs her mouth in placing the young at the nipple,
where it remains suspended. The mammary glands of the mother