INSTINCT AS INHERITED MEMORY. 199 



tions. We should expect that it would be transmitted 

 in a more or less partial, varying, imperfect, and intelli- 

 gent condition before equilibrium had been attained ; it 

 would, however, continually tend towards equilibrium, 

 for reasons which will appear more fully later on. 

 When this stage has been reached, as regards any habit, 

 the creature will cease trying to improve ; on which the 

 repetition of the habit will become stable, and hence 

 become capable of more unerring transmission but at 

 the same time improvement will cease ; the habit will 

 become fixed, and be perhaps transmitted at an earlier 

 and earlier age, till it has reached that date of mani- 

 festation which shall be found most agreeable to the 

 other habits of the creature. It will also be manifested, 

 as a matter of course, without further consciousness or 

 reflection, for people cannot be always opening up settled 

 questions ; if they thought a matter over yesterday they 

 cannot think it all over again to-day, but will adopt for 

 better or worse the conclusion then reached; and this, too, 

 even in spite sometimes of considerable misgiving, that 

 if they were to think still further they could find a still 

 better course. It is not, therefore, to be expected that 

 "instinct" should show signs of that hesitating and 

 tentative action which results from knowledge that is 

 still so imperfect as to be actively self-conscious ; nor 

 yet that it should grow or vary, unless under such 

 changed conditions as shall baffle memory, and present 

 the alternative of either invention that is to say, 

 variation or death. But every instinct must have 

 passed through the laboriously intelligent stages through 

 which human civilisations and mechanical inventions are 

 o 



