The Sense of the Beautiful in Brutes [pp. 126-142]

THE SENSE OF THE
to make us see the pyimordial id-lentity of intelligence and inStinct.
Attentive observation, free froran partiality, indepuendent of a
preconceived theory, arrives at other conclusions. It recognizes
lhe fact that ftundamental differences separate instinct from intelligenee. The latter is a faculty with multiplied and indefinitely diverse aims. It pursues by turns ends that are very disti:lct; it knows them, it chooses them, it chooses also the courses
which lead to them, it demurs, it hesitates, it is mistaken, it recovers itself; but it is its own controlling and perfecting agent.
In man, where we can study it, it disposes of organs which are,
like itself, devoted to variable ends, and when these organs do
not suffice, it creates artificial ones which it calls instruments,
tools. Thus its characteristics are foresight, fallibility, progress,
above all generalization. Instinct presents nAone of these characteristics; it presents characteristics which are directly opposite. One of the meats of il. I-L. Joly is that he has set forth
these distinctive features of instinct in a new and striking light.
With one sEtroke he has given a refutation, implicit and explicit,
of the theoryv of sexual selection founded on the msthetic sentimenert of the animal. I am going to take up this refutation and
complete it.
The an]imal has a power of spontaneous action; this power is
excited by want, by appetite, by s-uffering or enjoymuent-in brief,
b)y sensation. Its actions tend to an end, but this end it is ignorant of. Thus the insect, herbivorous in the adult state, deposits
its eggs on putrefied flesh, on which its offspring are nourished,
and these offspring it will not see hatched; the motive of its action is therefore unknown to it. The beaver, captive and protected from all want, will still construct its dam if you place materials within its reach; this construction has no object. With
these animals there is no foresight. Moreover the brute generally succeeds in its laboris at the first attempt. Without education, without experience, without hesitation, the bird builds its
nest, the carnivorous animal recognizes and attacks its prey, the
ruminant distinguishes and browses upon its herb. Separated
from its species, and allowing only that it makes use of its organic powers, what its parents have done it will do, and perfectly. What is still more worthy of notice, the animal is incapable, in a state of nature at least, of attempting any other
[Janiuiar~y,
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