o 



28 Organic Nature s Riddle 



their future prepared by their past, and thus, as it were, 

 at every present moment they live both in the past and in 

 the future, a mode of existence which attains its fullest 

 development in the highest Hving organism — man, the 

 creature looking before and after ! Thus those who would 

 do away with mystery in nature would gain httle by explain- 

 ing instinct through habit, though, as we have seen, the 

 phenomena' presented to us by the human infant and by 

 neuter insects absolutely bar any such explanation. More- 

 over, the attempt to explain ' instinct ' through ' inheritance ' 

 is a contradiction, since 'inheritance' supposes something 

 already obtained, otherwise it could not be transmitted. So 

 far, then, from ' hereditary transmission' explaining ' instinct,' 

 instinct, in whatever remote ancestor it first arose, must have 

 been a violation of the law of hereditary transmission. 



Now as to ' lapsed intelligence ' : This hypothesis assumes 

 that a conscious, deliberate, discriminating faculty must have 

 once been exercised by wasps, bees, ants, and other much 

 more lowly animals, in the performance of all those actions 

 which are now instinctive. But could the adult female 

 insect be supposed to foresee the future needs of her first 

 progeny, often so totally different from her OAvn wants ? 

 It would surely be too much to ask us to beheve that she 

 could distinctly recollect all her past experience as a chrysalis 

 and as a grub from the moment she first quitted the Oi'gg. 

 Can we suppose that the generative acts of male insects, 

 such as bees, could have been due to deliberate and rational 

 choice, when every such act is necessarily fatal to him who 

 performs it ? 



Nevertheless, persuaded as I am that ' lapsed intelligence ' 

 will not explain ' instinct ' generally, I should be the last to 

 deny that certain apparently instinctive actions may be so 

 explained, and I fully admit that intelligent action in our- 

 selves does tend to become practically though not really 



