I 



07'ganic Natures Riddle 333 



hazard variations of habit in ancestral animals ? If it can- 

 not be maintained, as I am confident it cannot, then it is 

 absolutely impossible successfully to evade the difficulty of 

 the existence of instinct. However far we may put back 

 the beginnings of instinct, the question as to its origin 

 (with its subsequent modifications) ever returns, and indeed 

 with increased importunity. How did the first sentient 

 creatures obtain and swallow their food ? How did they 

 first come to fecundate their ova or suitably to deposit 

 them ? How did they first effect such movements as might 

 be necessary for their respiratory processes ? Wherever such 

 phenomena first manifested themselves in sentient organisms, 

 we are compelled therein to recognise the manifest presence 

 of instinct — the appointed means (as before said) of bridging 

 over the interval between the purely vegetative functions 

 and the inteUigent activities of sentient animal Hfe. ' Natural 

 selection ' is manifestly impotent to account for the existence 

 of such a faculty as that of ' instinct.' We have already seen 

 that the hypothesis of ' lapsed intelligence ' is also impotent 

 to account for it. Thus the most recently attempted ex- 

 planation falls altogether to the ground. Nevertheless the 

 theory of Evolution renders it necessary to assume that as 

 new species of animals were from time to time evolved, so 

 also were new and appropriate instincts. How then are we to 

 account for the origin of such new instincts ? That a certain 

 mystery attends such origin cannot be denied, but a parallel 

 mystery attends all other kinds of vital phenomena. What 

 can be more mysterious than the purely organic functions 

 of animals ? Though not truly instinctive, they are full of 

 unconscious purpose, and so are akin to instinct. Our 

 nutrition is a process of self-generation by which the various 

 matters which constitute our food become transformed into 

 our own substance. This process is effected by what is 

 called assimilation, by which process the ultimate substance. 



