ABSTRACT
It is a dominant characteristic of Intelligence, viewed in its successive stages of evolution, that its processes, which, as originally performed, were not accompanied with a consciousness of the manner in which they were performed, or of their adaptation to the ends achieved, become eventually both conscious and systematic. All intelligent action presupposes a grouping together of things possessing like properties. To know what is eatable and what not; which creatures to pursue and which to fly; what materials are fit for these purposes and what for those; alike imply the arrangement of objects into classes of such nature, that from certain sensible characteristics of each, certain other characteristics are foreseen. If mental phenomena conform to fixed laws, then, an unusual skill in choosing true hypotheses, means nothing else than an unusual tendency to pursue that mental process by which true hypotheses are reached; and this implies that such a process exists.
