Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 11.djvu/561

 BIOLOGICAL FOUNDATIONS OF SOCIOLOGY 545

developed. > The cat, on the other hand, learns much. By its play it develops both body and mind. A dog is still more capable of learning. This capacity of learning and utilizing experience is what we term "intelligence." All our domestic animals have some intelligence, which is why we are able to tame them. Man, the latest product of evolution, is pre-eminent above all other animals in his capacity for storing and utilizing experience. It is this that makes him human. It is this alone that makes him rational. All thinking depends on memory. Such an animal as Sitaris cannot think; it can only feel. Man is inferior to Sitaris in instinct, but in intellect, which is the product of stored experi- ence, he is immeasurably superior.

To sum up, man is distinguished from all other animals, first, by his enormous power of storing mental experiences, a power which we term " memory " ; and, second, by his equally splendid power of utilizing the contents of his memory, a power which we term " reason." These powers are possessed by all races of man- kind and by all sane individuals; though it may be that this or that race or individual has greater powers than another. Simi- larly, all races and sane individuals have the same instincts; for these, like memory and reason, are not sudden developments, but products of prolonged evolution. It is possible, of course, that one race or one individual has more or less of this or that instinct than another, but the difference can seldom be great. No word is more abused in popular, and even in scientific, literature than " instinct." Thus we often hear of the " instinct " of the savage for tracking game. But no savage baby is born with a knowledge of the appearance and habits of wild animals, nor does the knowl- edge arise in him during later life, in the absence of experience, any more than a knowledge arises thus in a civilized baby. Pre- sumably, an English child, under fit tuition, would acquire the knowledge just as quickly and easily. So also we hear of a blow being dodged " instinctively ; " but no human being dodges blows until he has learned the nature of blows and how to avoid them. In the house-fly, on the contrary, the knowledge, if we may so term it, of dodging blows is really instinctive. We hear of the human "instinct" of fear; but a baby fears nothing till he has