DISCUSSIONS ON INSTINCT 287 



I trust Prof. Baldwin will not insist on coining many 

 new terms, or favour their adoption, as far as evolution 

 is concerned. "Social heredity" is about equivalent, 

 is it not, to social environment, and the entire environ- 

 ment is one into which, as a rule, the animal is born, 

 so why speak of " social heredity " ? Technicalities 

 have their advantages, but they often conduce to 

 mental myopia, and hamper the comprehension and 

 progress of truth by binding it up in packages, so to 

 speak packages which all cannot readily undo. 



WESLEY MILLS. 

 M'GiLL UNIVERSITY. 



IN Prof. Mills' communications on " Instinct," he 

 seems to have missed the point in the case of each of 

 those criticised "The Writer of the Note," Prof. Morgan, 

 and myself. In the case of the fowl's drinking, it is 

 not the mere fact that drinking and eating may differ 

 in the degree to which the performance is congenital ; 

 the reports seem to show that this varies in different 

 fowl, but that instincts (in this case drinking) may be 

 only half congenital, and may have to be supplemented 

 by imitation, accident, intelligence, instruction, etc., in 

 order to act, even when the actions are so necessary to 

 life that the creature would certainly die if the function 

 were not performed. That is the interesting point. 



Then, in criticising me, Prof. Mills accuses me of 

 ignoring the " effects of environment and of use." On 

 the contrary, these are just the facts which I appeal to. 

 By adaptations to the environment and by use, the 

 creature manages to keep alive; other creatures die 

 off; so certain determinate directions of congenital 

 variation are singled out and inherited. Thus phylo- 

 genetic variations become determinate, just through 



