CHAPTER XX 



THEORIES OF MENTAL EVOLUTION 



All instinctive actions are voluntary They differ from rational actions 

 only in that tendency, and (as a rule) the capacity to perform them 

 is inborn Lewes Spencer Romanes Mental acquirements are 

 not transmissible Offspring are not affected mentally by the action 

 of the environment on the parental germ-plasm. 



424. CONTRARY to accepted doctrine, I have maintained 

 in the foregoing pages that an instinctive action is of the 

 voluntary, not the reflex type, since it is prompted by an 

 emotion, a desire. No one will quarrel with the use of the 

 word emotion, for an instinct is an emotion an emotion 

 which prompts to certain definite acts, the instinctive acts. 

 Objection will certainly be taken, however, to the use of the 

 word desire. It will be argued : If an instinctive animal 

 has no memory, if, therefore, he has no conception of the 

 past and consequently can gather no idea of the. future, if he 

 lives entirely in the present, how can he be influenced by 

 prospective pleasures or pains ? How can he desire a thing 

 of which he has no conception ? Everything depends on the 

 meaning we give to the words present, future, and pro- 

 spective. Doubtless a spider when he approaches his mate 

 does not desire posterity. Very probably he has not even 

 an idea of the sexual act nor the pleasure he will derive from 

 it. But he lives in a " specious present ," which has in it an 

 immediate past, and, therefore, may be said to have an 

 immediate future. His instinct, his emotion, prompts him 

 to approach the female in this immediate future, and then, 

 as the specious present drifts on, it prompts in succession to 

 that series of actions which culminate in the sexual act. I 

 am sure I do not know by what name to distinguish this 

 prompting emotion if not by the term " desire." Presumably 

 the spider finds a pleasure in performing the instinctive acts, 

 and would find a pain or discomfort in not performing them. 



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