9 S FUNCTIONAL INERTIA 



the psychic about it : whether accompanied by 

 much, little, or no consciousness, it is due to pro- 

 toplasmic inertia notwithstanding. In a very large 

 number of cases, habit can be regarded as " un- 

 conscious memory " * and instinct is but inherited 

 habit. It is psychic inertia that makes one write 

 "1906" when 1907 has been two or three days 

 old. Instinct being thus inertial accounts for its 

 so-called "blindness" or " fatality ;" naturalists 

 know well the limits of instinct and how full it is 

 of momentum. Sometimes it is in the interests of 

 a hive of bees to have a queen at once placed there, 

 but as she is a stranger to the hive she is in most 

 cases attacked and killed through the instinct to 

 destroy a stranger ; had she been a queen reared 

 by the hive she would of course have been fostered 

 and fed. Much inertia and little affectability, 

 characterises the insects ; they do a little very 

 well, very mechanically, and in a very stereo- 

 typed manner. Thus the limits to their being taught 

 or educated are rigid : " instinct remains in 

 status quo," says Marcus in his " Monism." f 

 Now we have already identified inertia with the 

 maintenance of the status quo. The associating 

 of inertia with habit had occurred to the 

 naturalist Frank Buckland, when, in speaking 

 of salmon-breeding in rivers where, owing to 

 weirs and pollution, the salmon were expected 



* Ewald Hering, " On Memory as a General Function of Organised 

 Matter." Almanack of the Imperial Academy of Science of Vienna. 

 1876, t Loc. cit. p. 97. 



