INSTINCTS OF NEUTER INSECTS. 221 



pose distinguishes ignorance from over-familiarity, both 

 which states are alike unself-conscious, though with 

 widely different results. 



* But I could show," continues Mr. Darwin, " that 

 none of these characters are universal. A little dose 

 of judgement or reason, as Pierre Huber expresses it, 

 often comes into play even with animals low in the 

 scale of nature. 



" Frederick Cuvier and several of the older meta- 

 physicians have compared instinct with habit." 



I would go further and would say, that instinct, in 

 the great majority of cases, is habit pure and simple, 

 contracted originally by some one or more individuals ; 

 practised, probably, in a consciously intelligent manner 

 during many successive lives, until the habit has ac- 

 quired the highest perfection which the circumstances 

 admitted; and, finally, so deeply impressed upon the 

 memory as to survive that effacement of minor impres- 

 sions which generally takes place in every fresh life- 

 wave or generation. 



I would say, that unless the identity of offspring 

 with their parents be so far admitted that the children 

 be allowed to remember the deeper impressions engraved 

 on the minds of those who begot them, it is little less 

 than trifling to talk, as so many writers do, about in- 

 herited habit, or the experience of the race, or, indeed, 

 accumulated variations of instincts. 



When an instinct is not habit, as resulting from 

 memory pure and simple, it is habit modified by some 

 treatment, generally in the youth or embryonic stages of 

 the individual, which disturbs his memory, and drives 



