INSTINCT, 243 



under which an instinctive action is performed, but not 

 necessarily of its origin. How unconsciously many habitual 

 actions are performed, indeed not rarely in direct oppo- 

 sition to our conscious will ! yet they may be modified by 

 the will or reason. Habits easily become associated with 

 other habits, with certain periods of time and states of the 

 body. When once acquired, they often remain constant 

 throughout life. Several other points of resemblance 

 between instincts and habits could be pointed out. As in 

 repeating a well-known song, so in instincts, one action 

 follows another by a sort of rhythm; if a person be inter- 

 rupted in a song, or in repeating anything by rote, he is 

 generally forced to go back to recover the habitual train of 

 thought; so P. Huber found it was with a caterpillar, 

 which makes a very complicated hammock; for if he took 

 a caterpillar which had completed its hammock up to, say, 

 the sixth stage of construction, and put it into a hammock 

 completed up only to the third stage, the caterpillar simply 

 re-performed the fourth, fifth and sixth stages of con- 

 struction. If, however, a caterpillar were taken out of a 

 hammock made up, for instance, to the third stage, and 

 were put into one finished up to the sixth stage, so that 

 much of its work was already done for it, far from deriving 

 any benefit from this, it was much embaiTassed, and in 

 order to complete its hammock, seemed forced to start 

 from the third stage, where it had left off, and thus tried 

 to complete the already finished work. 



If we suppose any habitual action to become inherited — 

 and it can be shown that this does sometimes happen — 

 then the resemblance between what originally was a habit 

 and an instinct becomes so close as not to be distinguished. 

 If Mozart, instead of playing the piano-forte at three years 

 old with wonderfully little practice, had played a tune with 

 no practice at all, he might truly be said to have done so 

 instinctively. But it would be a serious error to suppose 

 that the greater number of instincts have been acquired hj 

 habit in one generation, and then transmitted by inherit- 

 ance to succeeding generations. It can be clearly shown 

 that the most wonderful instincts with whicli we are 

 acquainted, namely, those of the hive-bee and of many ants, 

 could not possibly have been acquired by habit. 



It will be universally admitted that instiucts are as im- 



