INSTINCT AND REASON. 6j 



would naturally insist upon his docility or power of 

 being taught ; upon his versatility or power of adapting 

 various means to the same or various ends ; upon his 

 moral nature, embracing the different passions and affec- 

 tions, and the knowledge of good and evil ; and, lastly, 

 no doubt, one would be inclined and one would have 

 a right to insist on the grandeur of his aspirations. A 

 crafty rhetorician would perhaps dwell on the collective 

 value of these endowments, and then exhibit them, 

 separately, rising to their height and fulness in men 

 like Archimedes, and Chrysostom, and Dante. He 

 would dare us to trace back the mental ancestry of 

 these true heroes to apes and fishes. Yet the reason, 

 piety, and imagination of such men, are themselves 

 developed between childhood and maturity; their very 

 pre-eminence shows that improvement in such qualities 

 is possible from one generation to another, and that 

 therefore meanness of origin needs only to be coupled 

 with remoteness in time to reconcile the supremacy of 

 man's intelligence with its ultimate derivation from the 

 lowest powers of consciousness. 



Mr. Wallace has pointed out very clearly and conclu- 

 sively the fallacious character of the evidence on which 

 the old theory of instinct was founded. Starting with 

 the notion that wild animals had none of that docility 

 and versatility which man possesses through his reason- 

 ing powers, yet seeing them produce effects like those 

 which man produces by the help of teachers or his own 

 choice of means, we inferred the existence of as many 

 separate faculties as there are kinds of animals. Each 



