Page:The British Warblers A History with Problems of Their Lives - 2 of 9.djvu/52

 many, then the attempt to explain the stereotyped uniformity, which we everywhere see around us, becomes even more difficult. Are we to suppose that the standard of intelligence has remained stationary, while by its assistance, instincts have been gradually built up or modified to suit changed conditions? We cannot do so. For if such a faculty is really innate, it must have been, and must be still, subject to the same laws which have been responsible for the development in every other direction; it must therefore be more potent to-day than yesterday; it must, in fact, have developed pari passu with the selection of the more adaptive activities for which it has been responsible. I do not, of course, wish to imply an intellectual progress akin to that in human life, but a more highly elaborated perception and an increased capacity for taking advantage of opportunities as they arise, and the result of this would necessarily have been a corresponding increase in divergent individualism, and we ought in some measure to be conscious of the transitions and of the repeated attempts on the part of different individuals to depart from the normal type of activity. But this is not the case: the law of uniformity, in fact, precludes the possibility of it. We are therefore forced to conclude that if intelligence has really been operative, it has at the same time been unprogressive, while in every other direction progress has been made, and this I cannot believe.

The importance of placing this question of individuality, with its far-reaching effects, beyond dispute cannot be overestimated, since it directly affects the question as to whether animal species display any traces of intellectual development from generation to generation, and, indirectly, the possibility of a progressive development from animal to human intelligence, and consequently the whole subject of the genesis of mind. The final solution must rest with those naturalists who will devote themselves to the study of one, or at the most a few, species.