DARWIN' AND HIS REVIEWERS. 173 



ual animals acquire their instincts gradually, 1 is a 

 statement which must have been penned in inadver- 

 tence both of the very definition of instinct, and of 

 everything we know of in Mr. Darwin's book. 



It has been attempted to destroy the very founda- 

 tion of Darwin's hypothesis by denying that there are 

 any wild varieties, to speak of, for natural selection to 

 operate upon. We cannot gravely sit down to prove 

 that wild varieties abound. We should think it just 

 as necessary to prove that snow falls in winter. That 

 variation among plants cannot be largely due to hy- 



into races) and intelligence ; but would maintain that both are endow- 

 ments of the higher brutes and of man, however vastly and unequal 

 their degree, and with whatever superaddition to simple intelligence in 

 the latter. 



[Prof. Joseph Le Conte, in Popular Science Monthly, September, 

 1875, refers to his definition of instinct as "inherited experience," 

 published in April, 1871, as having been anticipated by that of Hering, 

 as " inherited memory," in February of the same year. Doubtless the 

 idea has been expressed by others long before us.] 



To allow that " brutes have certain mental endowments in common 

 with men," .... desires, affections, memory, simple imagination or 

 the power of reproducing the sensible past in mental pictures, and even 

 judgment of the simple or intuitive kind" — that " they compare and 

 judge" ("Memoirs of American Academy," vol. viii., p. 118) — is to 

 concede that the intellect of brutes really acts, so far as we know, like 

 human intellect, as far it goes ; for the philosophical logicians tell us 

 all reasoning is reducible to a series of simple judgments. And Aris- 

 totle declares that even reminiscence — which is, we suppose, " repro- 

 ducing the sensible past in mental pictures " — is a sort of reasoning 

 (rb ava/j.i/jLvf)(rKeo6ai iariv olov ffvWoyicr/xSs ris). 



On the other hand, Mr. Darwin's expectation that " psychology will 

 be based on a new foundation, that of the necessary acquirement of each 

 mental power and capacity by gradation," seems to come from a school 

 of philosophy with which we have no sympathy. 



1 American Journal of Science, July, 1860, p. 146. 



