( 35) 
It is indeed surprising that Darwin himself, after his own 
crushing argument against the hypothesis of evolution by 
inherited experience, should have been willing to admit some 
tincture of the same principle in other parts of the wide field. 
If we are perforce thrown upon unaided natural selection for 
the origin and growth of the most complex and specialized 
societies of the Hymenoptera, what need have we for co-operat- 
ing causes of evolution elsewhere ? 
I conclude this section of my Address dealing with the most 
remarkable of all nerve-mechanisms of instinct known to us, 
with the following impressive comparison, made by Professor 
Lankester, after contemplating the higher forms in which 
instincts have been replaced by the power of educability. 
“The character which we describe as ‘educability’ can be 
transmitted ; it is a congenital character. But the results of 
education can vot be transmitted. In each generation they 
have to be acquired afresh. With increased ‘ educability’ 
they are more readily acquired and a larger variety of them. 
On the other hand, the nerve-mechanisms of instinct are 
transmitted, and owe their inferiority as compared with the 
results of education to the very fact that they are not acquired 
by the individual in relation to his particular needs, but have 
arisen by selection of congenital variation in a long series of 
preceding generations.” 
“To a large extent the two series of brain-mechanisms, the 
‘instinctive’ and the ‘ individually acquired,’ are in opposition 
to one another. Congenital brain-mechanisms may prevent 
the education of the brain and the development of new 
mechanisms specially fitted to the special conditions of life. ‘To 
the educable animal the less there is of specialized mechanism 
transmitted by heredity, the better. The loss of instinct is what 
permits and necessitates the education of the receptive brain.”’ 
‘We are thus led to the view that it is hardly possible for 
a theory to be further from the truth than that expressed by 
George H. Lewes and adopted by George Romanes, namely, 
that instincts are due to ‘lapsed’ intelligence. The fact is 
that there is no community between the mechanisms of instinct 
and the mechanisms of intelligence, and that the latter are 
later in the history of the development of the brain than the 
