It
becomes educable. It is no longer necessary for each generation to
be exactly like that which has preceded. A door is opened through
which the capacity for progress can enter. Horses and dogs, bears
and elephants, parrots and monkeys, are all teachable to some
extent, and we have even heard of a learned pig. Of learned asses
there has been no lack in the world.
But this educability of the higher mammals and birds is after all
quite limited. By the beginnings of infancy the door for
progressiveness was set ajar, but it was not all at once thrown
wide open. Conservatism stilt continued in fashion. One
generation of cattle is much like another. It would be easy for
foxes to learn to climb frees, and many a fox might have saved his
life by doing so; yet quickwitted as he is, this obvious device
never seems to have occurred to Reynard. Among slightly teachable
mammals, however, there is one group more teachable than the rest.
Monkeys, with their greater power of handling things, have also
more inquisitiveness and more capacity for sustained attention than
any other mammals; and the higher apes are fertile in varied
resources. The orang-outang and gorilla are for this reason
dreaded by other animals, and roam the undisputed lords of their
native forests. They have probably approached the critical point
where variations in intelligence, always important, have come to be
supremely important, so as to be seized by natural selection in
preference to variations in physical constitution.
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