The proximate cause of
the limitation seems to lie in the absence of the wish to go further; the
presence or absence of the wish will depend upon the nature and
surroundings of the individual, which is simply a way of saying that one
can get no further, but that as the song (with a slight alteration)
says:--
"Some breeds do, and some breeds don't,
Some breeds will, but this breed won't:
I tried very often to see if it would,
But it said it really couldn't, and I don't think it could."
* * * * *
M. Ribot in his work on Heredity {119} writes (p. 14):--"The duckling
hatched by the hen makes straight for water." In what conceivable way
can we account for this, except on the supposition that the duckling
knows perfectly well what it can and what it cannot do with water, owing
to its recollection of what it did when it was still one individuality
with its parents, and hence, when it was a duckling before?
"The squirrel, before it knows anything of winter, lays up a store of
nuts. A bird when hatched in a cage will, when given its freedom, build
for itself a nest like that of its parents, out of the same materials,
and of the same shape."
If this is not due to memory, "even an imperfect" explanation of what
else it can be due to, "would," to quote from Mr. Darwin, "be
satisfactory."
"Intelligence gropes about, tries this way and that, misses its object,
commits mistakes, and corrects them.
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