Habits which are forced upon organisms by the environment under penalty of extinction become hereditary modes of procedure. They are persisted in because vitally beneficial. Comparative anatomy shows us that those organs and structures which are most persistent have their functions most instinctive; and conversely, as individual freedom of action increases, instinct retires and intelligence takes its place, accompanied by higher plasticity in the structures involved in the action. Intelligent action is personal initiative from compared experiences. It is not merely repetition, as in the tricks of animals, but deduction; therefore it introduces new tendencies into life, which instinct never does; and these tendencies are not the direct sequences of external stimuli, as are instincts, but are psychic in origin, proceeding from the mental conclusion reached. No more interesting comparison between instinct and intelligence can be found than that offered by the social communities of the lower animals,—the bees, ants, beavers, and the like. Their well-regulated activities excite our surprise and admiration. Each member of the little state has his duty and performs it, with the result that all are thereby benefited and the species successfully perpetuated. But much of the admiration expended on these societies in the lower life has been misplaced. Their perfect organisation is due to narrower development of mental powers. The one object at which they aim is species-continuation, and to this all else is subordinated. They are in no sense comparable to the reflective purpose which is at the base of human society, whose real, though oft unacknowledged, and ever unsuccessful, aim is to insure to each individual the full development of his various powers. Hence it is that human society is and must be ever changing with individual aspirations, and can never be iron-bound in one form. _Imagination._—There is another faculty of mind, which, if not exclusively human, is so in all its higher manifestations, and indeed is, in its development, perhaps the best mental criterion we could select to measure the evolution of races, nations, and individuals. I refer to Imagination, Fancy, the source of our noblest enthusiasms, of our loftiest sentiments, of poetic rapture, and artistic inspiration. These spiritual sentiments are wholly absent in the brute, and are rare in inferior personalities. They arise from the vivid presentation to the mind of real or fancied experiences directed to some end in view. But this is just the definition of active imagination. It is a rehearsal of our perceptions, real, or those analogous to reality. Though not a collation of ideas, its processes are closely akin to those of logical thought; and, as an eminent analyst says, “The principle of an organic division according to an end in view governs all processes of active imagination.”