Page:Nature and Man.djvu/22

Rh hereditary nervous mechanism by which many simple and necessary movements of the body are controlled and brought into relation with the outer world acting upon the sense-organs, can be carried in a relatively small bulk of brain-substance. Fish, lizards, and crocodiles with their small brains carry on a complex and effective life of relation with their surroundings. It appears that the increased bulk of cerebral substance means increased 'educability'—an increased power of storing up individual experience—which tends to take the place of the inherited mechanism with which it is often in antagonism. The power of profiting by individual experience, in fact educability, must in conditions of close competition be, when other conditions are equal, an immense advantage to its possessor. It seems that we have to imagine that the adaptation of mammalian form to the various conditions of life had in Miocene times reached a point when further alteration and elaboration of the various types, which we know then existed, could lead to no advantage. The variations presented for selection in the struggle for existence presented no advantage—the 'fittest' had practically been reached, and was destined to survive with little change. Assuming such a relative lull in the development of mere mechanical form, it is obvious that the opportunity for those individuals with the most 'educable' brains to defeat their competitors would arise. No marked improvement in the instrument being possible, the reward, the triumph, the survival would fall to those who possessed most skill in the use of the instrument. And in successive generations the bigger and more educable brains would survive and mate, and thus bigger and bigger brains be produced.