Abstract. This paper sees intelligence as certainly not a thing which is the sole prerogative of man but rather as a category of skill, natural to all organisms, integral with their capacity for handling their environment, and increasingly well developed in the higher animals. Intelligence is seen as a natural property of living organisms at their highest levels: a characteristic of living things which is emergent in the same way as, and essentially in parallel with, perception, consciousness, and moral and spiritual sensitivities.