term in the ordinary signification as taught to ordinary people—must imply either its existence in the whole animal world, or its gradual evolution[1] with the specialization of type, both of which premises are outside scientific reasoning, and therefore quite beyond the cognizance of plain folk. To deny conscious intelligence is a corollary to denying immortality to animals, and it is often the desire to monopolise the last that so frequently ensures the denial of the first.[2] The writer of 'Ecclesiastes' had nursed the thought—"Who knoweth the spirit of man whether it goeth upward, and the spirit of the beast whether it goeth downward to the earth."
That animal intelligence is sufficient to prove much mimicry of an active and not of a merely passive character, is abundantly advocated by facts. That an insect or bird should seek and obtain concealment by its own volition, and by a sense of adaptation in bringing into juxtaposition its own peculiarly-coloured body with some material object with which it closely assimilates, is an exemplification of intellect, though inferior to that shown in the general psychology of Bees, Wasps, and Ants. In Birds it would rank lower than the acquired and more complicated knowledge of the African Honey-bird, which is able to associate the appearance of Man with that of a honey-seeking creature, and to lure and lead him to the nest of the Bee, in order that his assistance and strength may wreck the nest and leave the bird
- ↑ "I believe that the spirit of man was developed out of the anima or conscious principle of animals, and that this, again, was developed out of the lower forms of life-force, and that this in its turn out of the chemical and physical forces of nature; and that at a certain stage in this gradual development, viz. with man, it acquired the property of immortality precisely as it now, in the individual history of each man at a certain stage, acquires the capacity of abstract thought" (Josh. Le Conte, 'Evolution and its Relation to Religious Thought,' p. 295).
- ↑ The Hon. L.A. Tollemache has contributed some original remarks on this subject:—"I sometimes think that the lower animals bear the same sort of relation to man that the Apocrypha bears to the Bible. Theologians are apt to regard the human soul and the Bible as having a right (so to speak), each in its own way, to say 'Noli me tangere' to science. The lower animals and (though in a very different manner) the Apocrypha bar such exorbitant claims. They serve as intermediate links, and thus tend to evolutionize Religion. In other words, the lower animals are half-human, just as the Apocrypha is half-Biblical" ('Benjamin Jowett,' p. 37, note).
