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Organic Nature s Riddle 329 



instinctive. It is, moreover, very fortunate for us that sucli 

 is the case, as thereby we are saved great mental friction. 

 Our intellect has first to be laboriously applied to learn what 

 afterwards becomes almost automatic, as the actions of 

 reading, writing, etc. Sensations and bodily actions having 

 been duly kneaded together, the intellect becomes free to 

 withdraw and apply itself to other work — fresh conquests 

 over mere animality — leaving the organism to carry on auto- 

 matically the new faculties thus acquired. Were it not for 

 this poAver which we have of withdrawing our attention, our 

 intellect would be absorbed and wasted in the merest routine 

 work, instead of being set free to appropriate and render 

 practically instinctive a continually wider and more im- 

 portant range of deliberate purposive actions. 



We come now to the sixth and last attempt to explain 

 instinct, namely, Mr. Darwin's attempt. He has recognised the 

 futiHty of seeking to explain many instinctive actions in any 

 of the modes we have yet considered, and he has proposed, as 

 before said, to explain such residual instinctive phenomena 

 by the play of natural selection, i.e. of the destructive forces of 

 nature upon small, accidental abnormalities of action on the 

 part of individuals of a species; such abnormahties, when 

 favourable to the existence of the individual, being preserved 

 and perpetuated by the destruction of the other individuals of 

 the same species who adhered to their ancestral tendencies. 

 But this proposed explanation is not an explanation of the 

 origin of instincts, but only of the changes and transforma- 

 tions of instincts already acquired. But putting back the 

 date or modifying the form of the original instinct in no 

 way alters the essential nature of instinct or diminishes its 

 mystery. Let us look at one or two strong cases of instinct, 

 and see if it is credible that they should be due to mere 

 accidental, haphazard, minute changes in habits already 

 acquired. In the first place, there is the wonderful instinct 



