BEDROCK 



there uncomfortably and conspicuously, the parent bird passed 

 again and again over its head carrying food to the other nestlings 

 without paying it the least attention." * 



But there are other and even more serious objections to Bergson's 

 views on instinct. It is by a limited outlook, by concentrating 

 attention on the instinctive powers which are actively employed 

 in attacking or repelling other animals, that men have been led to 

 uphold a Lamarckian interpretation of instinct as " lapsed intelli- 

 gence," and that Bergson, while repudiating this fallacy, is led to 

 explain instinct as intuitive insight into life. The Lamarckian and 

 Bergsonian hypotheses alike break down before a more extended 

 survey. By far the commonest manifestations of protective instinct 

 in insects are, when successful, sundered from all experience of other 

 living forms. The " mere presence together " spoken of by Bergson 

 (p. 50) is here non-existent. This argument was advanced by the 

 present writer in 1887, as well as on later occasions, and, so far as he 

 is aware, it has never been met. I may quote a paragraph published 

 in 1905 :— 



"It is not from the insects which have had the most varied 

 experience of enemies, most opportunities of learning by contact 

 with danger how to avoid them, and thus of developing their 

 nervous systems through use — it is not from these that existing 

 forms have been descended, but from precisely those which have 

 had the least experience. Even for ourselves experience is 

 spoken of as ' the stern guide.' To an insect she is apt to be so 

 stern as to lose all her educational value. The less an insect sees 

 of her the better the chance of existence and of representation 

 in the generations of the future. The prime necessity for an 

 insect, as for all animals which cannot in any real sense contend 

 with their foes, is to avoid experience of them altogether." f 



We may consider briefly a special kind of protective instinct, that 

 of cocoon-making, — the preparation 



" for the dangers of a struggle at some future time, when the 

 organism which manifested the instinct will have changed its 

 form, and become incapable of making further changes in the 

 means of protection, and indeed as a rule entirely incapable of 

 making any defence. . . . The Lamarckian interpretation fails 

 to account for the cocoon-making instinct for two very sufficient 



* The British Bird Book, Sect. VI., Vol. II., Ed. R B. Kirknian, pp. 4S3— 4, 

 London and Edinburgh. 



t Essays on Evolution, Poulton, Oxford, 1908, p. 155. 



51 



