438 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



best, and doing the best. It can not be built up on imitation. By 

 imitation, suggestion, and conventionality tlie masses are formed 

 .and controlled. To build up a man is a nobler process, demanding 

 materials and methods of a higher order. The growth of man is the 

 assertion of individuality. Only robust men can make history. 

 Others may adorn it, disfigure it, or vulgarize it. 



The first relation of the child to external things is expressed in 

 this: What can I do with it? What is its relation to me? The sen- 

 sation goes over into thought, the thought into action. Thus the 

 impression of the object is built into the little universe of his mind. 

 The object and the action it implies are closely associated. As more 

 objects are apprehended, more complex relations arise, but the 

 primal condition remains — What can I do with it? Sensation, 

 thought, action — this is the natural sequence of each completed 

 mental process. As volition passes over into action, so does science 

 into art, knowledge into power, wisdom into virtue. 



It is thus evident that, with an animal as with an army, locomo- 

 tion demands direction. The sensorium is built up as a director of 

 motion. Natural selection causes the survival of those whose senses 

 are adequate for the safe control of movement. The animal which 

 conducts its life processes in insecurity perishes. The existence of 

 an organism is the test of its adequacy. The continued existence of 

 a series of organisms is the ultimate proof of the truth of the senses. 



With the lower animals we have automatic obedience to the 

 demand of external conditions. The greater the stress of the en- 

 vironment the more perfect the automatism, for impulses to safe 

 action must always be adequate for the duty which in the ancestral 

 past they have had to perform. To automatic mind processes in- 

 herited from generation to generation the name instinct has been 

 given. Whether instinct is in any degree " inherited habit " or 

 whether it is the product simply of natural selection acting upon the 

 varying methods of automatic response destroying those whose re- 

 sponses are inadequate, need not concern us now. 



The homing instinct of the fur seal, concluding its long swim of 

 three thousand miles by a return on a little island hidden in the arctic 

 fogs, to the very spot from which it was driven by the ice six months 

 before, excites our astonishment. But this power is not an illustra- 

 tion of animal intelligence. The homing instinct with the fur seal 

 is a simple necessity of life. Without it the individual would be 

 lost to its species. Only those which have the instinct in perfection 

 can return; only those who return can leave descendants. As to 

 the others, the rough sea tells no tales. We know that not all of the 

 fur seals who set forth return. To those who do return the homing 

 instinct has proved adequate. And this it must always be, so long 



