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CHAPTEE XI. 



INSTINCT AS INHERITED MEMORY. 



I HAVE already alluded to M. Ribot's work on " Here- 

 dity," from which I will now take the following pas- 

 sages. 



M. Ribot writes : — 



" Instinct is innate, i.e., anterior to all individual 

 experience" This I deny on grounds already abund- 

 antly apparent ; but let it pass. " Whereas intelligence 

 is developed slowly by accumulated experience, instinct 

 is perfect from the first " (" Heredity," p. 14). 



Obviously the memory of a habit or experience will 

 not commonly be transmitted to offspring in that per- 

 fection which is called " instinct," till the habit or ex- 

 perience has been repeated in several generations with 

 more or less uniformity ; for otherwise the impression 

 made will not be strong enough to endure through the 

 busy and difficult task of reproduction. This of course 

 involves that the habit shall have attained, as it were, 

 equilibrium with the creature's sense of its own needs, 

 so that it shall have long seemed the best course pos- 

 sible, leaving upon the whole and under ordinary cir- 

 cumstances little further to be desired, and hence that 

 it should have been little varied during many genera- 



