n THE NATURE OF INSTINCT 179 



to come and complicate it. I agree also that natural 

 selection may eliminate all those of the more compli 

 cated forms of instinct that are not fit to survive. 

 Still, in order that the life of the instinct may evolve, 

 complications fit to survive have to be produced. 

 Now they will be produced only if, in certain cases, the 

 addition of a new element brings about the correlative 

 change of all the old elements. No one will maintain 

 that chance could perform such a miracle : in one form 

 or another we shall appeal to intelligence. We shall 

 suppose that it is by an effort, more or less conscious, 

 that the living being develops a higher instinct. But 

 then we shall have to admit that an acquired habit can 

 become hereditary, and that it does so regularly enough 

 to ensure an evolution. The thing is doubtful, to put 

 it mildly. Even if we could refer the instincts of 

 animals to habits intelligently acquired and hereditarily 

 transmitted, it is not clear how this sort of explanation 

 could be extended to the vegetable world, where effort 

 is never intelligent, even supposing it is sometimes 

 conscious. And yet, when we see with what sureness 

 and precision climbing plants use their tendrils, what 

 marvellously combined manoeuvres the orchids perform 

 to procure their fertilization by means of insects, 1 how 

 can we help thinking that these are so many instincts ? 

 This is not saying that the theory of the neo- 

 Darwinians must be altogether rejected, any more 

 than that of the neo - Lamarckians. The first are 

 probably right in holding that evolution takes place 

 from germ to germ rather than from individual to 

 individual ; the second are right in saying that at the 

 origin of instinct there is an effort (although it is 



1 See the two works of Darwin, Climbing Plants and The Fertilization of 

 Orchids by Insects, 



