Darwin makes
very little indeed of voluntary efforts as a cause of change, and even
poor Lamarck need not be caricatured. He never supposed that an
elephant would take such a notion into his wise head, or that a
squirrel would begin with other than short and easy leaps; but might
not the length of the leap be increased by practice?
The "North American" reviewer's position, that the higher brute
animals have comparatively little instinct and no intelligence, is a
heavy blow and great discouragement to dogs, horses, elephants, and
monkeys. Stripped of their all, and left to shift for themselves as
they can in this hard world, their pursuit and seeming attainment of
knowledge under such peculiar difficulties is interesting to
contemplate. However, we are not so sure as is the critic that
instinct regularly increases downward and decreases upward in the
scale of being. Now that the case of the bee is reduced to moderate
proportions,[12] we know of nothing in instinct surpassing that of an
animal so high as a bird, the Talegal, the male of which plumes
himself upon making a hot-bed in which to hatch his partner's
eggs,--which he tends and regulates the heat of about as carefully and
skilfully as the unplumed biped does an eccaleobion.[13] As to the
real intelligence of the higher brutes, it has been ably defended by a
far more competent observer, Mr. Agassiz, to whose conclusions we
yield a general assent, although we cannot quite place the best of
dogs "in that respect upon a level with a considerable portion of poor
humanity," nor indulge the hope, or, indeed, the desire, of a renewed
acquaintance with the whole animal kingdom in a future life.
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