On Animal Instinct : in its Relation to tlie Mind of Man. 325 



the experience of progenitors "organized in the race." It involves 

 assumptions contrary to the analogies of nature, and at variance with 

 the fundamental facts which are the best and, indeed, the only basis 

 of the theory of evolution. There is no probability— there is hardly 

 any plausibility — in the supposition that experience has had, in past 

 times, some connection with instinct which it has cegsed to have in the 

 present day. The uniformity of nature has, indeed, often been asserted 

 in a sense in which it is not true, and used in support of arguments 

 which it will not sustain. All things have certainly not continued as 

 they are since the begining. There was a time when animal life, and 

 with it animal instincts, began to be. But we have no reason what- 

 ever to suppose that the nature of instinct then or since has ever been 

 different frum its nature now. On the contrary, as we have in existing 

 nature examples of it in infinite variety, from the very lowest to the 

 very highest forms of organization, and as the same phenomena are 

 everywhere repeated, we have the best reason to conclude that, in the 

 past, animal instinct has ever been what we now see it to be, congenital, 

 innate, and wholly independent of experience. 



And indeed, when we come to think about it, we shall find that the 

 theory of experience assumes the pre-existence of the very powers for 

 which it professes to account. The very lowest of the faculties by 

 which experience is acquired is the faculty of imitation. But the 

 desire to imitate must be as instinctive as the organs are hereditary by 

 which imitation is effected. Then follow in their order all the higher 

 faculties by which the lessons of experience are put together— so that 

 what has been in the past is made the basis of anticipation as to Avhat 

 will be in the future. This is the essential process by which experi- 

 ence is acquired, and every step in that process assumes the pre-exist- 

 ence of mental tendencies and of mental powers which are purely 

 instinctive and innate. To account for instinct by experience is 

 nothing but an Irish bull. It denies the existence of things which 

 are nevertheless assumed in the very terms of the denial : it elevates 

 into a cau.se that which must in its nature be a consequence, and a 

 consequence, too, of the very cause which is denied. Congenital 

 instincts, and hereditary powers, and pre-established harmonies, are 

 the origin of all experience, and without them no one step in experience 

 could ever be gained. The questiorts raised when a young Dipper, 

 which had never before even seen water, dives and swims with perfect 

 ease, are questions which the theory of organized experience does not 

 even tend to solve ; on the contrary it is a theory wdiich leaves those 

 questions precisely where they were, except in so far as it may tend to 

 obscure them by obvious confusions of thought. 



