INSTINCT AS INHERITED MEMORY. 199 



tions. We should expect that it would be transmitted 

 in a more or less partial, varying, imperfect, and intelli- 

 gent condition before equilibrium had been attained ; it 

 would, however, continually tend towards equilibrium, 

 for reasons which will appear more fully later on. 

 When this stage has been reached, as regards any habit, 

 the creature will cease trying to improve ; on which the 

 repetition of the habit will become stable, and hence 

 become capable of more unerring transmission — but at 

 the same time improvement will cease ; the habit will 

 become fixed, and be perhaps transmitted at an earlier 

 and earlier age, till it has reached that date of mani- 

 festation which shall be found most agreeable to the 

 other habits of the creature. It will also be manifested, 

 as a matter of course, without further consciousness or 

 reflection, for people cannot be always opening up settled 

 questions ; if they thought a matter over yesterday they 

 cannot think it all over again to-day, but will adopt for 

 better or worse the conclusion then reached; and this, too, 

 even in spite sometimes of considerable misgiving, that 

 if they were to think still further they could find a still 

 better course. It is not, therefore, to be expected that - ! 

 "instinct" should show signs of that hesitating and 

 tentative action which results from knowledge that is 

 still so imperfect as to be actively self-conscious ; nor 

 yet that it should grow or vary, unless under such 

 changed conditions as shall baffle memory, and present 

 the alternative of either invention — that is to say, 

 variation — or death. But every instinct must have 

 passed through the laboriously intelligent stages through 

 which human civilisations and mechanical inventions are 



