[III-20]
As to the real intelligence of the higher brutes, it has been ably
defended by a far more competent observer, Mr. Agassiz, to whose
conclusions we yield a general assent, although we cannot quite place
the best of dogs "in that respect upon a level with a considerable
proportion of poor humanity," nor indulge the hope, or indeed the
desire, of a renewed acquaintance with the whole animal kingdom in a
future life.
The assertion that acquired habitudes or instincts, and acquired
structures, are not heritable, any breeder or good observer can
refute.
That "the human mind has become what it is out of a developed
instinct," is a statement which Mr. Darwin nowhere makes, and, we
presume, would not accept. That he would have us believe that
individual animals acquire their instincts gradually,[III-21] is a
statement which must have been penned in inadvertence both of the very
definition of instinct, and of everything we know of in Mr. Darwins
book.
It has been attempted to destroy the very foundation of Darwins
hypothesis by denying that there are any wild varieties, to speak of,
for natural selection to operate upon. We cannot gravely sit down to
prove that wild varieties abound. We should think it just as necessary
to prove that snow falls in winter. That variation among plants cannot
be largely due to hybridism, and that their variation in Nature is not
essentially different from much that occurs in domestication, and, in
the long-run, probably hardly less in amount, we could show if our
space permitted.
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