Biology / by Patrick Geddes and J. Arthur Thomson.

  • Geddes, Patrick, Sir, 1854-1932.
Date:
[1925]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Biology / by Patrick Geddes and J. Arthur Thomson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    219/268 (page 211)
    crawling round and round in futile circumam- bulation—a striking instance of the limitations of instinct. As Fabre said, 44 Ils ne savent rien de rien.” A gleam of intelligence would have broken the spell : yet it must be noted that an animal which is in some respects intelligent may show nothing of this in stretches of behaviour which have become thoroughly instinctive. Thus it is an error of interpretation to call a pigeon 44 unutterably stupid ” because it may continue brooding on nothing, while its stolen eggs lie exposed only two or three inches away. The brooding activities in such varieties of domesticated pigeon have been entirely 44 handed over ” to instinct, and there is then no interference on the part of intelligence. By intelligent behaviour—as in apes and monkeys, dogs and horses, rooks and parrots—- we mean chains of actions that we cannot make sense of without crediting the creature with some capacity for putting two and two together, in fact, forming a simple judgment. Intelligent behaviour is distinguished from instinctive behaviour in requiring to be learned ; and it implies some understanding of the situation. The animal is not hopelessly nonplussed when details and particulars are altered. Romanes distinguished intelligent from rational behaviour by regarding the psychological correlate of the former as perceptual inference, and that of the latter as conceptual inference. There is no known case