We can now see more clearly what was meant by saying that Romanes'
phrase (that intelligence "implies a conscious knowledge of the relation
between means employed and ends attained") is ambiguous. The dog which
lifts the latch of a gate and goes out when the gate swings open
undoubtedly employs means to reach an end; he need not analytically
think the means as conducive to the end and the end as reached by the
means; he need not conceive this relationship as exemplified in a number
of particular cases; he need not cognize the universal as distinguished
from the particulars. Perceptual experience, therefore, does not imply
what Romanes states if his words are interpreted in terms of conception;
it does, however, imply that the relationship is contained within the
unanalysed whole of experience and is a factor contributing to an
acquired mode of behaviour.
Opinions differ as to how far, if at all, animals show what we are bound
to interpret as the rudiments of conceptual thinking. It is perhaps best
to regard the question as still _sub judice_. The evolutionist school,
but not without exception, incline to the view that we find in animals
the beginnings of conceptual experience; some are, however, of opinion
that, in the absence of language, conceptual analysis is well-nigh
impossible, and in any case cannot be carried far. To an evolutionist
the assertion that conceptual intelligence could not conceivably have
had a natural genesis from perceptual experience, appears to be made on
grounds other than scientific. Few if any psychologists contend, on
strictly psychological grounds, for a distinction of kind such as Mivart
and Wasmann postulate. Conscious experience is indeed _sui generis_ and
is distinct in kind from the energy with which the physicist or the
physiologist has to deal; but within conscious experience from its
earliest manifestation to its latest development scientific psychology
only recognizes differences of mode.
Stages of development.
In individual development the earliest manifestation of experience is
the conscious accompaniment or concomitant of that type of organic
behaviour which includes all reflex and instinctive acts. This affords
the primordial tissue of experience, including a conscious awareness of
the stimulating presentations which initiate organic behaviour and the
kinaesthetic presentations which accompany it. Thus arises an awareness
of the development of the instinctive situation. Perceptual intelligence
depends upon associative re-presentation--the earlier phases of a
presented situation calling up a revival of the whole previous
experience before its later phases are again actually presented. Through
the process of inhibition, to the clearer understanding of which
physiology is daily contributing fresh data, the actual development
through behaviour of the later phases of the situation is checked, and
an acquired modification of the behaviour results. The whole range of
perceptual intelligence in animals illustrates the manner in which
accommodation to varied circumstances is reached. On these foundations
in varied experience conceptual intelligence is developed. The early
stages of its development, whether in the child, in whom it
unquestionably occurs, or in the higher animals, in which it is not
improbably incipient, are difficult to determine on the basis of
observation of its expression in behaviour or conduct. But the
distinguishing features of conceptual as contrasted with perceptual
intelligence are the comparison of situations with a view to their
analysis, the disentangling of factors which are of importance for some
purpose of interpretation or of conduct, and the attitude of mind which
is expressed by saying that the particular case is an example of what
experience has shown to be, in technical phrase, universal, and is
realized as such. Under the comprehensive phrase, intelligence in
animals, this may or may not be included.