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By Root 540 0

sympathy and compassion, distinguish right from wrong, and remain ever sensitive to conscience is often, and doubtless rightly, regarded as the highest product of evolution on this planet. Only humans have such a mind in a more than rudimentary state, and we have it because, in the first place, we needed a big brain to guide the versatile hands that our earliest terrestrial progenitors inherited from ancestors whose forelimbs had been modified for climbing in trees and plucking fruits. Since foreseeing guidance is what the living world most lacked, we might suppose that such a mind would, from the beginning, exercise a consistently beneficent influence, and in the measure that it developed, might become an ever more powerful agent for creating high values, promoting harmony and happiness.

Alas!the contrary is all too true. Although dawning intelligence soon gave humans great advantage over competing animals, it involved us in all sorts of difficulties. Confused and misused, it intensified strife, too frequently brought sorrow when it might have increased joy, and threatened to wreck the living worlda threat that today we feel more keenly than ever before. Why something

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with such great capacity for promoting all that is good has been the cause of so much evil is a paradox that we must now try to explain. Since intelligence supervened upon instinct, we must begin our inquiry with a glance at this large topic.

Instinct, Forerunner of Intelligence

We can hardly doubt that the activities of our remote ancestors were controlled largely by instincts, as, in varying degrees, is true of all other vertebrate animals, from fish and amphibians to birds and mammals. Instinct is one of those unfortunate words so often loosely used that we would like to avoid it, but we can hardly do so without using clumsy circumlocutions.

Of the subjective aspects of instinctive activities, we can only surmise. We cannot be certain whether an animal foresees the end of an instinctive performance or approaches it blindly. Nevertheless, one that demonstrates its ability to learn many things about its surroundings seems capable also of learning, from past performances of an innate series of actions, to expect a certain outcome. Moreover, if the structure of its brain and nervous system prepared it to accomplish, without instruction, some complicated task, such as the construction of a nest, it does not appear impossible for this same structure to create, in advance of all experience, a mental picture of the result.

This subjective aspect of the instinct might well be promoted by natural selection, for to have an image of the goal should help the animal to achieve it in variable circumstances. The fact that animals sometimes persist stubbornly in some instinctive activity in circumstances that preclude its successful termination is certainly not proof that they are not aware of what they are trying to do; for we, who pride ourselves that we know what we are about, occasionally exhibit similar stupidity. May not the human mind's lack of clear innate ideas result from the decay of those complex patterns of innate behavior that we call instincts?

Although the psychic aspect of instinctive behavior stirs the imagination of the sympathetic observer of animals, let us say no

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more about this fascinating subject and proceed to the more soluble problem of distinguishing instinctive activity from reflex action, on the one hand, and intelligent behavior, on the other, for between these two territories lies the half-explored realm of instinct. Instinctive activity differs from reflex action chiefly by its higher level of integration, so that between the two no precise boundary can be drawn. From a simple reflex, like scratching an irritating spot on the skin or blinking the eyes, an instinctive activity, such as building a nest by birds or wasps, differs, among other things, in the greater number of muscles involved, their more complex interactions, and the continuance of the activity over a longer