The story of the mind.

  • James Mark Baldwin
Date:
[c.1900]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The story of the mind. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Leeds Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Leeds Library.

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    would not lie useful; and, further, suppose wo agree that many of the complex instincts really involved intelligent adaptation in their acquisi- tion. These points carefully understood, then one new and further principle will enable us to complete a theory which will avoid the objec- tions to both the others. This principle is no- thing else than what we have seen already— namely, that the intelligence supplements the partial instincts in each generation and makes them useful in the respects in which they are inadequate, and so keeps the young alive in successive generations as long as the instinct is imperfect. This gives the species time gradually to supplement its instinctive endowment, in the course of many generations each of which uses its intelligence in the same way : time to accumu- late, by the occurrence of variations among the offspring, the changes in the nervous system which the perfect instinct requires. Thus as time goes on the dependence of each generation upon the aid of intelligence is less and less, until the nervous system becomes capable of performing the function quite alone. The result then will be the same as if the acquisitions made by each generation had been inherited, while in reality they have not. All that this theory requires in addition to what is admitted by both the historical views is that the species be kept alive long enough by the aid of its intelligence, which supplements imperfect instincts, to give it time to produce sufficient variations in the right direction. The instinct then achieves its