176 MENTAL EVOLUTION IN ANIMALS. 



about six weeks.* He says that the child first accidentally 

 finds the comfort of the attitude, and so adopts it more and 

 more constantly until through habit it becomes instinctive. 

 He also gives exactly parallel facts in the case of learning to 

 , creep, sit, stand, walk, &c.t 



Among animals in a state of nature we may, I think, 

 regard all instincts which, so far as we can see, are trivial or 

 useless, as instincts which are imperfect, in that they do not 

 answer to any apparent needs in the animals' present condi- 

 tions of life. Such instincts are not very numerous, and, as 

 Mr. Darwin observes in the Appendix, they may be quoted 

 as objections to his theory of the development of instinct by 

 natural selection. I shall subsequently consider this diffi- 

 culty, but here I have only to note the fact that instincts of 

 this apparently purposeless kind occut, and that, qud pur- 

 poseless, they are imperfect. Such, for instance, is the 

 instinct of a hen cackling when she has laid an egg, the cock- 

 pheasant crowing when going to roost, cattle and elephants 

 goring their sick or wounded companions, sundry instincts 

 connected with excrements — such as burying them in earth, 

 always depositing them in the same place, &c. — and other 

 cases mentioned by Mr. Darwin in the Appendix. 



But the most important class of considerations for us is 

 one to which the foregoing may be said to lead up. We 

 have seen that if instincts have been developed by evolution, 

 we should expect to find cases in which they are in process 

 of evolution, or not yet perfect ; and we have also seen that 

 this expectation is realized. Xow in so far as instinct requires 

 to be mixed with intelligence in order to be effective, it is as an 

 instinct imperfect ; it is as an instinct in course of formation, 

 or at any rate not perfectly adapted to the possible circum- 

 stances of life. Therefore all cases of the education of 

 instinct by intelligence — whether in the individual or the 

 I'ace — fall to be considered in the present connection. The 

 consideration of this subject, however, lands us directly in 

 a larger and deeper topic as to the origin and development of 

 instinct in general. To this topic, therefore, we shall next 

 address ourselves. 



* Die Seele des Kindes, Leii>zig, 1882, pp. 166-7. 

 t Ibid., pp. 167-75. 



