314 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



tlon of a candle or other bright object, he was as unable as an infant to 

 apprehend its distance; so that, when told to lay hold of a watch, he 

 groped at it just as a young child lying in its cradle." He gradually 

 began to use his eyes ; first in places with which he was not familiar, 

 but it was several months before he trusted to them for guidance as 

 other children of his age would do. No one will doubt the accuracy 

 of any of these statements ; but I cannot agree with Dr. Carpenter 

 that he had in the case of the boy any thing " exactly parallel " to my 

 experiment of hooding chickens at birth and giving them their sight 

 at the end of one or two days. This boy was couched when three 

 years old. Probably sight would have been at first rather puzzling 

 to ray chickens, had they not received it until they were six montlis 

 old. Dr, Carpenter seems to have forgotten for the moment that in- 

 stincts as well as acquisitions decay through desuetude, and that this 

 is especially true when the faculties in question have never once been 

 started into action and are of the kind which develop through exer- 

 cise. Another and vital difference between Dr. Carpenter's experi- 

 ments and mine is this, that, when at the end of two days I gave my 

 chickens sight, I did not do so by poking out or lacerating the crystal- 

 line lenses of their eyes with a needle. 



The presumption, then, that the progress of the infant is but the 

 unfolding of inherited powers remains as strong as ever. With wings 

 there comes to the bird the power to use them ; and why should we 

 believe that, because the human infant is born without teeth, it should, 

 when they do make their appearance, have to discover their use by a 

 series of happy accidents ? 



One word as to the origin of instincts. In common with other 

 evolutionists, I have argued that instinct in the present generation 

 may be regarded as the product of the accumulated experiences of 

 past generations. More peculiar to myself, and giving special mean- 

 ing to the word experience, is the view that the question of the origin 

 of the most mysterious instinct is not more difficult than, or different 

 from, but is the same with the problem of the origin of the physical 

 structures of the creatures. For, however they may have come by 

 their bodily organization, it, in my opinion, carries with it a corre- 

 sponding mental nature. 



In opposition to this view, it has been urged that we have only to 

 consider almost any well-marked instinct to see that it could never 

 have been a product of evolution. We, it is said most frequently, can- 

 not conceive the experiences that might by inheritance have become 

 the instincts ; and we can see very clearly that many instincts are so 

 essential to the preservation of the creatures that without them they 

 could never have lived to acquire, them. The answer is easy. Grant- 

 ing our utter inability to go back in imagination through the infinite 

 multitude of forms, with their diversified mental characteristics, that 

 stand between the greyhound and the speck of living jelly to which, 



