In what I just said I left an "almost." There is a great deal of
saving virtue in that little adverb. Doubtless even animals low in
the scale possess some faint traces of educability; but they are so
very slight that it takes geologic ages to produce an appreciable
result. In all the innumerable wanderings, fights, upturnings and
cataclysms of the earth's stupendous career, each creature has been
summoned under penalty of death to use what little wit he may have
had, and the slightest trace of mental flexibility is of such
priceless value in the struggle for existence that natural
selection must always have seized upon it, and sedulously hoarded
and transmitted it for coming generations to strengthen and
increase. With the lapse of geologic time the upper grades of
animal intelligence have doubtless been raised higher and higher
through natural selection. The warm-blooded mammals and birds of
to-day no doubt surpass the cold-blooded dinosaurs of the Jurassic
age in mental qualities as they surpass them in physical structure.
From the codfish and turtle of ancient family to the modern lion,
dog, and monkey, it is a very long step upward. The mental life of
a warm-blooded animal is a very different affair from that of
reptiles and fishes. A squirrel or a bear does a good many things
in the course of his life. He meets various vicissitudes in
various ways; he has adventures.
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