INSTINCT. 137 



of regarding mind as independent of bodily organization. Hence it is, 

 that while familiar with the idea of physical peculiarities passing by 

 inheritance from one generation to another, they find it difficult to con- 

 ceive how anything so impalpable as fear at the sight of a bee should be 

 transmitted in the same way. Obviously, this difficulty is not consistent 

 with a thorough belief in the intimate and invariable dependence of all 

 kinds of mental facts on nervous organization. Let us, if possible, make 

 this clear. The facts of mind that make up the stream of an individual 

 life differ from material things in this important respect, that whereas 

 the latter can be stored up, volitions, thoughts, and feelings, as such, 

 cannot. Facts of consciousness cannot be thought of as packed away 

 like books in a library. They have to be forever produced, created, 

 one after another; and when gone they are out of existence. Whatever 

 associations may be formed among these, must depend for their perma- 

 nence on the corresponding impress given to the nervous organism ; and 

 why should not this, which is purely physical, be subject to the law 

 of heredity? Look at a friend as he lies in unconscious sleep. His 

 sovereigns are in his pocket, but where is his stock of ideas? Where is 

 all that he has learned from experience? You have simply a living 

 machine; but such a machine that it can wake and exhibit all the 

 phenomena of what we call a well-informed and cultivated mind. Sup- 

 pose, now, that while you stand by, another organism, the same in every 

 particle and fiber, is by some mysterious process formed direct from its 

 elements. Outwardly you cannot tell the one from the other; but wake 

 them and how will it be? Even then, will not the one being recognize 

 you, and then be as completely and indistinguishably your friend as the 

 other? Will not the newly created man, by virtue of his identical 

 material organization, possess the mind and character, the knowledge 

 and feelings, the past, in a word, the personal identity of the other? I 

 have made this extreme supposition in order that no doubt may be 

 entertained as to the shape in which I hold the doctrine that for every 

 fact of mind there is a corresponding fact of matter, and that, given the 

 material fact, whether produced by repeated experiences in the life 

 history of the individual, or inherited from parents, the corresponding 

 mental fact will be the same. If this view be admitted, there can be no 

 difficulty in conceiving how entrance into life on the part of the animals 

 may be a waking up in a world with which they are, in greater or less 

 degree, already acquainted ! Instinct, looked at from its physical side, 

 may be conceived to be, like memory, a turning on of the 'nerve cur- 

 rents' on already established tracks: for no reason, we presume, can 

 be suggested why those modifications of brain matter that, enduring 

 from hour to hour and from day to day, render acquisition possible, 

 should not, like any other physical peculiarity, be transmitted from 

 parent to offspring. That they are so transmitted is all but proved by 



