In all these cases, however, as we have previously remarked, the
illusion of intelligence is due to the combination of teleology or
objective purposiveness with sentient consciousness. But teleology
is nothing more than a material expression of intelligence, not to
be confounded with subjective intelligence, which is its causal
principle. When the cells of the iris of the eye of a larval salamander
regenerate the lens in its typical perfection, after the latter has
been experimentally destroyed, we behold a process that is objectively,
but not subjectively, intelligent. In like manner the instinctive
acts of an animal are teleological or objectively purposive, but do
not proceed from an intelligence _inherent in the animal_, any more
than the intelligent soliloquy delivered by a phonograph proceeds
from a conscious intelligence inherent in the disc. In the animal,
sentient consciousness is associated with this teleology or objective
purposiveness, but such consciousness is only aware of what can be
sensed, and is, therefore, _unconscious of purpose_, that is, of the
supersensible link, which connects a means with an end. “Instinct,”
to cite the words of Wm. James, “is usually defined as the faculty of
acting in such a way as to produce certain ends, without foresight
of the ends, and without previous education in the performance.”
(“Principles of Psychology,” vol. II, c. xxiv, p. 383.) Hence the
unconscious and objective purposiveness, which the human mind discerns
in the instinctive behavior of brutes, is manifestative, not of an
intelligence within the animal itself, but only of the infinite
intelligence of the First Cause or Creator, Who imposed these laws
replete with wisdom upon the animal kingdom, and of the finite
intelligence of man, who is capable of recognizing the Divine purpose
expressed, not only in the instincts of animals, but in all the telic
phenomena of nature. Such marvels are not the fortuitous result of
uncoördinated contingencies. Behind these correlated teleologies
of the visible universe there is a Supreme Intelligence, which has
“ordered all things in measure, and number, and weight.” (_Wisdom_:
XI, 21.) “And this universal geometry,” says Fabre, in allusion to the
mathematics of the Epeira’s web, “tells of an Universal Geometrician,
whose divine compass has measured all things. I prefer that, as an
explanation of the logarithmic curve of the Ammonite and the Epeira,
to the Worm screwing up the tip of its tail. It may not perhaps be in
accordance with latter-day teaching, but it takes a loftier flight.”
(“Life of the Spider,” p. 400.)
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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