EXAMINATION OF THE THEORIES OF OTHER WRITERS. 265 



have the pre-eminence, inasmuch as the principle of lapsing 

 intelligence can demonstrably have had no part at all in the 

 formation of the " most complex and wonderful instincts " 

 with which we are acquainted — viz., those of the social 

 Hymenoptera.* And this, as we have seen, is the judgment 

 of Mr. Darwin, wdiich therefore appears to me, in considera- 

 tion of all the reasons which I have now stated, to be the 

 truest judgment — and this without reference to the unap- 

 proachable authority upon the subject with which he must be 

 held to speak. 



General &itmmary on Instinct. 



For the sake of rendering clear the relations wdiich the 

 sundry principles that are concerned in the formation of 

 instinct bear to one another, I append a diagram which is 

 designed to show these relations in a graphic form. After 

 what has now been said it is only needful, for the purpose of 

 explaining the diagram, to observe the following points. The 

 little twigs which are represented as growing out of the large 

 branches or principles, are intended to represent instincts, 

 and I have inserted them in order to mark the only principles 

 from which instincts (in accordance with my definition of 

 instincts) are able to spring. Here and there I have repre- 

 sented the branching structure of these instincts as inarching 

 with one another — a device which is intended to display 

 what I take to be an important additional principle, viz., 

 that fully-formed instincts may occasionally blend, so giving 

 rise to new instincts ; this may be due either to novel 

 circumstances leading to an intentionally adaptive blending 



* It is demonstrable that lapsing intelligence can liave played no part in 

 tlie formation of these instincts, because the " workers," both among bees and 

 ants, are sterile. Lewes can never have had this particular case presented to 

 his mind, for it proves his theory of lapsing intelligence alone insufficient. 

 It is likewise incompatible with Spencer's theory. Thus, for instance, he 

 writes : — " The automatic actions of a bee building one of its wax cells, 

 answer to outer relations so constantly experienced that they are, as it were, 

 organically remembered " {Principles of Psychology, i, p. 445) . But he forgets, 

 as Lewes also forgot, that the insect which performs these aiitomatic actions 

 has not thus " constantly experienced " the " outer relations," for it begins by 

 performing these actions before it has itself had any individual experience of 

 cell-making, and without its parents ever having had any ancestral experience. 

 In the w^hole I'ange of instincts no more unfortunate illustration could have 

 been chosen by Mr. Spencer. How the difficulty is met by Mr. Darwin's 

 theory I shall consider at the beginning of the next chapter. 



