230 LIFE AND HABIT. 



you will get a corresponding action. If he does, he will 

 find, so far as I can see, no escape from a position very 

 similar to the one which I put into the mouth of the 

 first of the two professors, who dealt with the question 

 of machinery in my earlier work, " Erewhon," and which 

 I have since found that my great namesake made fun 

 of in the following lines : — 



" They now begun 

 To spur their living engines on. 

 For as whipped tops and bandy'd balls, 

 The learned hold are animals : 

 So horses they affirm to be 

 Mere engines made by geometry, 

 And were invented first from engines 

 As Indian Britons were from Penguins." 



— Hudibras, Canto ii. line 53, &c. 



I can see, then, no difficulty in the development of 

 the ordinary so-called instincts, whether of ants or bees, 

 or the cuckoo, or any other animal, on the supposition 

 that they were, for the most part, intelligently acquired 

 with more or less labour, as the case may be, in much 

 the same way as we see any art or science now in pro- 

 cess of acquisition among ourselves, but were ultimately 

 remembered by offspring, or communicated to it. When 

 the limits of the race's capacity had been attained (and 

 most races seem to have their limits, unsatisfactory 

 though the expression may very fairly be considered), or 

 when the creature had got into a condition, so to speak, 

 of equilibrium with its surroundings, there would be no 

 new development of instincts, and the old ones would 

 cease to be improved, inasmuch as there would be no 



