Racial Preparation 427 



action, wliich we ourselves require experience to enable us to per- 

 form, when performed by an animal, more especially by a very young- 

 one, without experience, and when performed by many individuals 

 in the same way, without their knowing for what purpose it is 

 performed, is usually said to be instinctive." And in the summary 

 at the close of the chapter he says\ "I have endeavoured briefly to 

 show that the mental qualities of our domestic animals vary, and 

 that the variations are inherited. Still more briefly I have attempted 

 to show that instincts vary slightly in a state of nature. No one will 

 dispute that instincts are of the highest importance to each animal. 

 Tlierefore there is no real difficulty, under changing conditions of life, 

 in natural selection accumulating to any extent slight modifications 

 of insthict which are in any way useful. In many cases habit or use 

 and disuse have probably come into play." 



Into the details of Darwin's treatment there is neither space nor 

 need to enter. There are some ambiguous passages ; but it may be 

 said that for him, as for his followers to-day, instinctive behaviour is 

 wholly the result of racial preparation transmitted through organic 

 heredity. For the performance of the instinctive act no individual 

 preparation under the guidance of personal experience is necessary. 

 It is true that Darwin quotes with approval Ruber's saying that 

 "a little dose of judgment or reason often comes into play, even with 

 animals low in the scale of nature V But we may fairly interpret his 

 meaning to be that in behaviour, which is conmionly called instinctive, 

 some element of intelligent guidance is often combined. If this be 

 conceded the strictly instinctive performance (or part of the per- 

 formance) is the outcome of heredity and due to the direct trans- 

 mission of parental or ancestral aptitudes. Hence the instinctive 

 response as such depends entirely on how the nervous mechanism 

 has been built up through heredity ; while intelligent behaviour, or 

 the intelligent factor in behaviour, depends also on how the nervous 

 mechanism has been modified and moulded by use during its develop- 

 ment and concurrently with the growth of individual experience in 

 the customary situations of daily life. Of course it is essential to 

 the Darwinian thesis that what Sir E. Ray Lankester has termed 

 " educability," not less than instinct, is hereditary. But it is also 

 essential to the understanding of this thesis that the differentiae of 

 the hereditary factors should be clearly grasped. 



For Darwin there were two modes of racial preparation, (1) natural 

 selection, and (2) the establishment of individually acquired habit. 

 He showed that instincts are subject to hereditary variation ; he saw 

 that instincts are also subject to modification through acquisition in 

 the course of individual life. He believed that not only the variations 



1 Origin of Specie* (0th edit.), p. 233. * Ibid. p. 205. 



