INSTINCT AS INHERITED MEMORY. 203 



to their advantage or pleasure to resemble, will be be- 

 lieved by any one who turns to Mr. Mivart's " Genesis 

 of Species," where he will find (chapter ii.) an account of 

 some very showy South American butterflies, which give 

 out such a strong odour that nothing will eat them, 

 and which are hence mimicked both in appearance and 

 flight by a very different kind of butterfly ; and, again, 

 we see that certain birds, without any particular desire 

 of gain, no sooner hear any sound than they begin to 

 mimick it, merely for the pleasure of mimicking ; so we 

 all enjoy to mimick, or to hear good mimicry, so also 

 monkeys imitate the actions which they observe, from 

 pure force of sympathy. To mimick, or to wish to 

 mimick, is doubtless often one of the first steps towards 

 varying in any given direction. Not less, in all pro- 

 bability, than a full twenty per cent, of all the courage 

 and good nature now existing in the world, derives 

 its origin, at no very distant date, from a desire to 

 appear courageous and good-natured. And this suggests 

 a work whose title should be "On the Fine Arts as 

 bearing on the Reproductive System," of which the 

 title must suffice here. 



Against faith, then, and desire, all the "natural 

 selection" in the world will not stop an amoeba from 

 becoming an elephant, if a reasonable time be granted ; 

 without the faith and the desire, neither "natural 

 selection" nor artificial breeding will be able to do 

 much in the way of modifying any structure. When 

 we have once thoroughly grasped the conception that 

 we are all one creature, and that each one of us is many 

 millions of years old, so that all the pigeons in the one 



