Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 1.djvu/641

Rh they can be wrecked, all not thus adapted having already been wrecked; and, second (which is only a particular case of the first), instincts, that have been developed through selective elimination, and which limit the feelings and will to particular grooves in which they may safely act. It is upon this that depends all the social advance that animals have made, and the study of animal sociology would differ from that of human in dealing with instincts and adaptations instead of rational acts. So that while all associative phenomena rest on subjective psychology, distinctively human association depends upon and presupposes a fully developed rational faculty.

I have called this the perceptive, as distinguished from the affective side of mind. This term, though inadequate to express the highest processes of the intellect is well adapted to describe the incipient stages of rational life. Since the new biology has taught us to account for every organ and attribute by the law of advantage, the intellect of man has presented the most marked obstacle to this mode of interpreting nature. It is admitted even by Weismann and Wallace, the leading apostles of the neo-Darwinian school, that the highest intellectual faculties cannot be thus accounted for. So far as I am aware I am the only one who has attempted to show a way out of this difficulty. I cannot go far into the question in this paper, and must be content for the most part to refer to the place where I have developed the thought. I will merely say that the intellect must be considered as the result of ages of slow development, that it began far back in the animal series, and that its sole purpose originally was to assist the will in attaining the objects of desire. Its primary stage I call intuition, passing into intuitive reason and judgment. The first form of knowing was a perception of relations, and this fully justifies the expression perceptive faculties. Their whole purpose was the creature's advantage, and they formed as legitimate a subject for natural selection to work upon as any other. The particular brain structures requisite to serve as organs of direction were immediately affected by the selective process,