170 ACQUIRED CHARACTERS SEC. 



inherited from his ancestors, and which were acquired by 

 them. He acts like a wound-up watch, by " instinct." 



From the point of view of evolution it is in vain to seek 

 for any other explanation of instinct than that which regards 

 it as inherited habit. Automatic actions, i.e. those which 

 we perform involuntarily without being conscious of them, 

 although they were originally consciously performed and con- 

 sciously learned, enable us better to understand this inherit- 

 ance of habit by our own experience. We act automatically 

 in consequence of habit. If such habit is inherited, we speak 

 of instinctive actions, of instinct. A good example of the 

 origin of instinct is afforded by the above described behaviour 

 of my young pointers. These cases sliow that not only in 

 bodily but in mental life one generation is connected with 

 another. Such inheritance of acquired mental characters is, 

 in my view, of great importance in the social life of animals 

 and the explanation thereof. 1 That all the ingenuity of 

 animals, so far as it is not due directly to the exercise of 

 intelligence and reason, i.e. of reflection at the time, can only 

 be explained by such inheritance, is self-evident. 



Without this inheritance of faculties developed by practice, 

 neither instinct nor any higher mental evolution could be 

 explained. Not only in their bodily characters, in their lia- 

 bility to particular diseases, in their bodily movements, but in 

 their whole intellectual life, the nations and races of mankind, 

 which must have descended from common ancestors, show 

 quite peculiar characteristics, e.g. the Jews, which must have 

 once been acquired by their forefathers. Among these char- 

 acters those which are to be ascribed to imitation from genera- 

 tion to generation can easily be distinguished, but only for a 

 short time, for imitation also is inherited, and becomes a 

 permanent acquisition. 



It is also an example of the inheritance of acquired char- 



1 Cf. my lecture, Ueber den Eegriff des thierischen Individuum. 



