144 ORGANIC EVOLUTION — MENTAL 



thinking and acting," and reason as " the faculty which 

 is concerned in the conscious adaption of means to ends 

 by virtue of acquired non-inherited knowledge and ways 

 of thinking and acting," it will be perceived that I 

 have sharply marked off all that is instinctive from all 

 that is rational, leaving no border-space where the one 

 merges into the other. In this, howevei", I believe I 

 am at variance with all other writers who have dealt 

 with the question from the standpoint of evolutionists. 

 These, with whom alone we are here concerned, seuer- 

 ally derive the one faculty from the other, in which 

 case there must of course be a border-space, " Spencer 

 regards instinct as 'compound reflex action, and the 

 precursor of intelligence ' (i. e. reason), while Lewes 

 regards it as ' lapsed intelligence,' and therefore neces- 

 sarily the successor of intelligence. Thus while Lewes 

 maintains that all instincts must originally have been 

 intelligent, Spencer maintains that no instinct need 

 ever have been intelligent." Professor Romanes, from 

 whom I have quoted, is in partial agreement and dis- 

 agreement with both Mr. Lewes and Mr. Spencer, think- 

 ing that in some cases the one is right, and in some 

 cases the other. All three authors base their theories 

 on the assumption that acquired mental variations are 

 capable of transmission and therefore of accumulation. 



It is a matter of common experience that the per- 

 formance of any complex action becomes more easy for 

 frequent repetition, till, if the action be repeated 

 frequently enough, the performance of it becomes 

 automatic; that is, the performance of it is accom- 

 panied less and less by a sense of mental effort, till at 

 length no sense of such effort is present in conscious- 

 ness. Thus we learn to walk, to speak, to read, to 

 write with difficulty, but in time constant practice 

 makes these complicated actions so easy that we 

 perform them with scarcely any, if any, sense of mental 



