246 LIFE AND HABIT. 



appeared; but it cannot be supposed that they would be 

 very far in advance of the last step gained, more than are 

 those " flukes " which sometimes enable us to go so far 

 beyond our own ordinary powers. For if they were, the 

 animal would despair of repeating them. No creature 

 hopes, or even wishes, for very much more than he has 

 been accustomed to all his life, he and his family, and 

 the others whom he can understand, around him. It has 

 been well said that " enough " is always " a little more 

 than one has." We do not try for things which we believe 

 to be beyond our reach, hence one would expect that the 

 fortunes, as it were, of animals should have been built 

 up gradually. Our own riches grow with our desires 

 and the pains we take in pursuit of them, and our 

 desires vary and increase with our means of gratifying 

 them; but unless with men of exceptional business 

 aptitude, wealth grows gradually by the adding field to 

 field and farm to farm ; so with the limbs and instincts 

 of animals ; these are but the things they have made 

 or bought with their money, or with money that has 

 been left them by their forefathers, which, though it is 

 neither silver nor gold, but faith and protoplasm only, 

 is good money and capital notwithstanding. 



I have already admitted that instinct may be modi- 

 fied by food or drugs, which may affect a structure or 

 habit as powerfully as we see certain poisons affect the 

 structure of plants by producing, as Mr. Darwin tells 

 us, very complex galls upon their leaves. I do not, 

 therefore, for a moment insist on habit as the sole cause 

 of instinct. Every habit must have had its originating 

 cause, and the causes which have started one habit will 



