256 EVOLUTION, OLD AND NEW. 



better to call the worm a reasonable creature with 

 Dr. Darwin than to say with Lamarck that because 

 worms do not appear to have that organ which he 

 assumes to be the sole means of causing sensation and 

 ideas, therefore they can neither feel nor think. Doubt- 

 less they cannot feel and think as many sensations and 

 thoughts as we can, but our ideas of what they can and 

 cannot feel must be formed through consideration of 

 what we see them do, and must be biassed by no theories 

 of what they ought to be able to feel or not feel. 



Again Lamarck, shortly after an excellent passage in 

 which he points out that the lower animals gain by 

 experience just as man does (and here probably he had 

 in his mind the passage of Buffon referred to at p. 112 

 of this work), nevertheless writes : 



" If the facts and considerations put forward in this 

 volume be held worthy of attention, it will follow 

 necessarily that there are some animals which have 

 neither reason nor instinct " (I should be glad to see one 

 of these animals and to watch its movements), " such as 

 those which have no power of feeling ; that there are 

 others which have instinct but no degree whatever of 

 reason " (whereas from Dr. Darwin's premises it should 

 follow, and would doubtless be readily admitted by 

 him, that instinct is reason, but reason many times 

 repeated made perfect, and finally repeated by rote ; so 

 that far from being prior to reason, as Lamarck here 

 implies, it can only come long afterwards), " such as 

 those which have a system enabling them to feel, but 

 which still lack the organ of intelligence ; and finally, 

 that there are those which have not only instinct, but 



