432 NATURE AND NURTURE 



that the so-called innate characters are simply characters which 

 have developed under one kind of stimulus (that of nutriment) 

 whereas the so-called acquirements are equally important characters 

 which have developed under other kinds of stimuli (those of injury 

 and use), that all evolution (or any sort of intrinsic racial change) 

 consists in a germinal alteration which implies increased or 

 decreased capacity to develop in a definite way under the influence 

 of this or that stimulus. According to this view the superior 

 innateness and inheritability of nutritional characters are only in 

 seeming. They develop more certainly than acquirements merely 

 because the stimulus of nutriment is always present in every 

 individual who develops at all, whereas the stimulus under which 

 this or that acquirement arises may be absent. Moreover, I have 

 supposed, not only that the evolution of the higher animals has 

 consisted mainly in a continually increasing power of developing 

 under the stimulus of use, but also that it has consisted in a con- 

 currently decreasing power of developing under the stimulus of 

 nutriment the former power possessing great advantages over, 

 and therefore displacing the latter. 



712. Of all this evolution, which to me appears to be so mani- 

 fest, Pearson seems unaware. As results of our differing opinions, 

 the moral and intellectual characters are to Pearson instincts ; 

 whereas I cannot conceive how such characters can be instincts. 

 An instinct, as I understand it, is merely an emotional impulse, the 

 prompting of which the individual is sure to follow unless it is 

 opposed by other instincts or acquirements. It is utterly unintelli- 

 gent, utterly non-moral. It has nothing to do with thought except 

 as a subject of thought, or with a sense of right and wrong except 

 in so far as this sense approves or disapproves of its promptings. 

 Moral and intellectual characters, as proved by unlimited evidence 

 and from their very nature, are acquirements. Taking all the facts 

 into account, I cannot imagine a purely instinctive animal, a beetle 

 or a caterpillar, as moral or intellectual, or a human being as such 

 except by virtue of the characters supplied by his memory. In effect, 

 the moral and intellectual beings that Pearson imagines, since they 

 are not moral or intellectual through acquirement, are imbeciles. 1 



713. The differences between Pearson and me are so great 

 that it is useless to discuss details in this place. Directly or 

 indirectly I have already done so, supporting my own opinion in 

 almost every chapter of the present volume by a mass of evidence 

 which is enormous, and which, however new (or newly applied), 



1 See 699. 



