5o8 



NATURE 



\pcL 7, 1875 



must have observed that while for a time they but_^hold up their 

 heads and open their mouths to be fed, they by-and-by begin 

 quite spontaneously to snap at the food. Here the development 

 may be observed as it proceeds. In the case of the swallow I 

 am inclined to think that they catch insects in the air perfectly 

 well immediately on leaving the nest. 



With regard, now, to man, is there any reason to suppose that, 

 unlike all other creatures, his mental constitution has to be in 

 the case of each individual built up from the foundation out of 

 the primitive elements of consciousness ? Reason seems to me 

 to be all the other way. The infant is helpless at birth for the 

 same reason that the kitten or swallow is helpless — because of its 

 physical immaturity ; and I know of nothing to justify the con- 

 trary opinion, as held by some of our distinguished psychologists. 

 Why believe that the sparrow can pick up crumbs by instinct, 

 but that man must learn to interpret his visual sensations and to 

 chew his food? Dr. Carpenter, in his " Mental Physiology," 

 has attempted to answer this argument in the only way in which 

 it could be answered. lie has produced facts which appear to 

 him to prove "that the acquirement of the power of visually 

 guiding the muscular movements is experimental in the case of 

 the human infant." More than forty years ago Dr. Carpenter 

 took part in an operation performed on a boy three years old for 

 congenital cataract. The operation was successful. In a few 

 days both pupils were almost clear ; but though the boy " clearly 

 recognised the direction, of a candle or other bright object, he 

 was unable as an infant to apprehend its distance ; so that when 

 told to lay hold of a watch he groped at it just as a young child 

 lying in its cradle." He gradually began to use his eyes ; first 

 in places with which he was not familiar, but it was several 

 months before he trusted to them for guidance as other children 

 of his age would do. No one will doubt the accuracy of any of 

 these statements ; but I cannot agree with Dr. Carpenter that he 

 had in the case of the boy anything "exactly parallel" to my 

 experiment of hooding chickens at birth and giving them their 

 sight at the end of one or two days. This boy was couched 

 when three years old. Probably sight would have been at first 

 rather puzzling to my chickens, had they not received it until 

 they were six months old. Dr. Carpenter seems to have for- 



fotten for the moment that instincts as well as acquisitions 

 ecay through desuetude, and that this is especially true when 

 the faculties in question have never once been started into action 

 and are of the kind which develop through exercise. Another 

 and vital difference between Dr. Carpenter's experiment and 

 mine is this, that Avhen at the end of two days I gave my chickens 

 sight, I did not do so by poking out or lacerating the crystalline 

 lenses of their eyes with a needle. 



The presumption, then, that the progress of the infant is but 

 the unfolding of inherited powers remains as strong as ever. 

 With wings there comes to the bird the power to use them ; and 

 why should we believe that because the human infant is born 

 without teeth, it should, when they do make their appearance, 

 have to discover their use by a series of happy accidents ? 



One word as to the origin of instincts. In common with 

 other evolutionists, I have argued that instinct in the present 

 generation may be regarded as the product of the accumulated 

 experiences of past generations. More peculiar to myself, and 

 giving a special meaning to the word experience, is the view that 

 the question of the origin of the most mysterious instincts is not 

 more difficult than, or different from, but is the same with the 

 problem of the origin of the physical structure of the creatures. 

 For, however they may have come by their bodily organisation, 

 it, in my opinion, carries with it a corresponding mental nature. 



In opposition to this view it has been urged that we have only 

 to consider almost any well-marked instinct to see that it could 

 never have been a product of evolution. We, it is said most 

 frequently, cannot conceive the experiences that might by inheri- 

 tance have become the instincts ; and we can see very clearly 

 that many instincts are so essential to the preservation of the 

 creatures that without them they could never have lived to 

 acquire them. The answer is easy. Granting our utter inability 

 to go back in imagination through the infinite multitude of forms, 

 with their diversified mental characteristics, that stand between 

 the greyhound and the speck of living jelly to which, according 

 to the theory of evolution, it is related by an unbroken line of 

 descent. Granting that we are, if possible, still Jess able to 

 picture m imagination the process of change from any one form 

 to another. What then? Not surely that the theory of evo- 

 lution IS false ! For the same argument will prove that no man 

 present can possibly be the son of his father. Our ignorance is 

 very great, but it is not a very great argument. 



The other objection, that the creatures could never have lived 

 to acquire their more important instincts, rests on a careless mis- 

 understanding of the theory of evolution. It assumes in the 

 drollest possible way that evolutionists must believe that in the 

 course of the evolution of the existing races there must have from 

 time to time appeared whole generations of creatures that 

 could not start on life from the want of instincts that they 

 had not got. There can be no need to say more than that 

 these unfortunate creatures are assumed to have been singu- 

 larly unlike their parents. The answer is, that it is not the 

 doctrine of evolution that the bodies arc evolved first by one 

 set of causes and the minds are put in afterwards by another. 

 This notion is but the still lingering shadow of the individual- 

 experience psychology. As evolutionists, whether we take the 

 more common view and regard the actions of animals as 

 prompted by their feelings and guided by their thoughts, or 

 believe, as I do, that animals and men are conscious automata, 

 in cither case wc are under no necessity of assuming in ex- 

 planation of the origin of the most mysterious instincts anything 

 beyond the operation of those laws that we see operating around 

 us, but concerning which we have yet to learn more, perhaps, 

 than we have learned. D. A. Spalding 



SOCIETIES AND ACADEMIES 



Paris 

 Academy of Sciences, Sept. 20. — Resume of the obser- 

 vations of the sun and of the planets Mercury, Venus, Mars, 

 Jupiter, Saturn, and Uranus, made at the Par s Observatory 

 during the year 1874, by M. Leverrier.-— On a remarkable 

 anatomical peculiarity of the rhinoceros, by MM. Paul and 

 Henri Gervais. — Addition to the note rela.ing to M. Bienayme's 

 theorem, by M. J. Bertrand. — Chemical and spectroscopic cha- 

 racters of a new metal, Gallium, discovered in a blende from 

 the Pierrefitte mine, Argeles Valley, Pyrenees, by M. Lecoq de 

 Boisbaudran. An account of this metal has already appeared in 

 our columns.— Theorem on the composition of co-variants, by 

 M. C. Jordan. — Preliminary note on the function of the pro- 

 tective sheath in herbaceous Dicotyledons, by M. J. Vesque. — 

 On a vertical column of vapour observed from a balloon, by M, 

 W. de Fonvielle. — On the development and structure of interior 

 foliaceous glands, by M. Joannes Chalin. — Existence and deve- 

 lopment of the Avicttla contorta zone in the Isle of Corsica, by 

 MM. L. Dieulafait and Hollande.— On the theory of hail, by 

 M. E, Renou. — On hailstones picked up at Criel-sur-Mer during 

 the storm of August 12, 1875, by M. A, Landrin. 



CONTENTS Pack 



The Astronomy of the Badylonians. By Rev. A. H. Sayce . . 489 



Comte's Philosophy. By Prof. W. Stanley Jrvons, F.R S. , . 491 



International Meteorology 493 



Our Book Shelf : — 



R.-imbles in search of Shells 493 



A Manual of the Mollusca 49 ^ 



Letters to the Editor:— 



Oceanic Circulation.— James Croll 494 



Dehiscence of Colloima Grandijlora. — J. F. Duthie . . . » 494 



Lunar Phenomena — Capt. A. J Loftus 495 



The Strength of the Lion and Tiger. — Prof. Samuel Haughton, 



F.R.S .49s 



A Snake in Ireland — Dr. J. Fayrhr » . 495 



Origin of the Numerals. — G. W. Wedster ; Wm. Lvall . . . 496 



Scalping.— G. Peyton , 496 



Our Astronomical Column :— 



The Double Star 2 2120 496 



The Nebula in the Pleiades * 496 



The Satellites of Uranus aud Neptune 496 



The Minor Planets 497 



The Total Solar Eclipse of 1878, July 29 497 



Mayer's Method of onTAiNiNG the Isothermals of the Solar 



Disc. By Alfred M. Mayer (^IVii/i Itti/stratiofi) 497 



Fayeoi^ THE Laws OF Storms i^yitA Ittustraiions) 497 



Notes 501 



Some Lecture Notes upon Meteorites. By Prof. N. S. Maskk- 



LYNE, F.R.S 504 



Instinct and Acquisition. — D. A. Spalding 507 



Societies and Academies 508 



Erratum.— P. 301, line 24, for " blackened temperature " read " maximum 

 temperature." 



