Instinct. 887 



when they understand, but are very hard to train to the bit, the race 

 not having inherited that disposition. 



A cat, taught to beg like a terrier, transmitted the trait to its kittens, 

 which did the same, though scattered to several owners before they ever 

 saw the act performed. 



Tameness results when the environment of the animal includes man 

 and his surroundings. Both tameness and wildness are instincts, and 

 may be lost, or acquired by hereditary use. Rabbits are very wild 

 when wild, and very tame when tame. 



The young of wild and tame ducks hatched in the same nest, show 

 their instinctive wildness and tameness as soon as they are out of the 

 shell. Of habits far gone in the process of crystallization into instincts, 

 there are many both of race and family. The tendency of all long estab- 

 lished human societies is to fall into grades and castes. We can easily 

 imagine that the four castes which obtained in India, if never disturbed, 

 would, in time, have become instinctive, so that the feelings of each in- 

 dividual would be a sufficient indication of his social status. 



Instinctive, or partially instinctive modes of thought are accounted 

 for in the same way that physical instincts are, that is, a certain struc- 

 ture of brain being inherited, the action most natural to that brain is 

 the action that differentiated and formed the brains from which it is 

 descended. So a religious habit of thought in an ancestral line may be- 

 get a religious tendenc}^, or instinct in the descendants. Such instincts 

 have often been cited as evidence of the reality of a relationship existing 

 between ourselves and a supernatural being. But obviously they prove 

 only that the ancestors thought there was such a relationship ; which, 

 thought differentiated organs that became hereditary. 



Among the human habits which may be regarded as instinctive, are 

 the feelings of superstition, which dominate all savage and semi-savage 

 races, and to which even civilized and enlightened races are frequently 

 liable to lapse, and which are strong in all recently civilized barbarians ; as 

 for example, the African race in America, the Sandwich Islanders, &c. 

 The aversion to work on the part of the males of some of our wild tribes 

 of Indians, in spite of precept, example, and education is, no doubt, in- 

 stinctive, as well as the industry of the women. 



In discussing mental phenomena under the various titles which we 

 give them, of reflection, instinct, automatism, intelligence, consciousness, 

 &c. , we must not lose sight of the fact that these terms serve only to 

 point out pecularities, aspects, or subordinate qualities attending the 

 manifestations of the forces of the environment in their assaults upon 

 the brain. They all result from these assaults and are all simply new 

 forms of the energy. They are movements, depending for their 

 peculiarities on the peculiarities of the things that move, but they are 



