THE INSTINCTS AND THE ACQUIREMENTS OF MAN 237 



395. Man, pre-eminently the rational animal, is pro- 

 portionately helpless at birth. His helplessness diminishes 

 as a result of the physical and mental acquirements he 

 makes. In this he differs from the young pigeon, which is 

 capable of making some acquirements, but which is helpless 

 chiefly because its instincts are deferred. In man, therefore, 

 the power of making acquirements has done more than sup- 

 plement instinct. In a large measure it has supplanted it. 

 In a lesser degree the same is true of all the highest animals. 

 Why has the power of making mental acquirements replaced 

 instincts? The explanation is twofold. In the first place, 

 reason confers adaptability, a faculty of enormous importance. 

 Secondly, as a single thing it is more easy of evolution than 

 a great number of instincts. Reason is a substitute for 

 millions of instincts, each of which would need for its evolu- 

 tion and maintenance a separate process of Natural Selection. 

 Reason for its evolution and maintenance needs only one 

 process of Natural Selection. Natural Selection implies 



able to declare that an impassable difference separates the elephant from 

 other animals merely because his nose is transcendentally long and can 

 be used for seizing objects. In man only the power of making and 

 using acquirements predominates greatly over instinct. Men, therefore, 

 have marked individualities, and human societies are changeful because 

 human character depends mainly, not on scarcely varying instincts, but 

 on mental acquirements which differ immensely in different individuals, 

 and from generation to generation. Lower animals lack individuality, 

 and their states of society are comparatively changeless, they are unable 

 to invent mechanical instruments, light fires, or transmit abstruse in- 

 formation, for an opposite reason. But very plainly the difference is 

 merely one of degree. Since the gulf is passable during development 

 (i. e. recapitulation), it is passable, and has been passed during evolution. 

 Mr. A. E. Wallace argues (Darwinism, p. 474) that, since the mathe- 

 matical, musical, artistic, and moral faculties can have been of no 

 assistance in the struggle for existence to the savage or brute progenitors 

 of modern man, their existence affords evidence that the evolution of his 

 mind has not been due solely to " the blind, eternal forces of the uni- 

 verse " (i. e. Natural Selection), . . . . " but must have had another origin, 

 and for this origin we can only find an adequate cause in the unseen 

 universe of spirit/' Mr. Wallace's reasoning is an interesting application 

 of the great maxim, " Whatever you are totally ignorant of assert to be 

 the explanation of everything else." The mathematical faculty is merely 

 a particular manifestation of the general faculty of making acquirements. 

 The fact that it can be more highly developed by training in some indi- 

 viduals than in others is no more a proof of supernatural origin than the 

 fact that a great capacity for distinguishing between different kinds of 

 tea is a proof of such origin. The moral faculties are not instinctive, as 

 Mr. Wallace implies, but mere acquirements. The artistic and musical 

 faculties, like the capacity for enjoying narcotics, are obviously explain- 

 able as by-products of mental evolution. (See Romanes, Darwin and 

 After Darwin^ vol. ii., pp. 25-35.) 



