132 Habit and Instinct. 



extravagance be interpreted as unconscious ; for only by 

 appealing to consciousness can they be thus guided. 

 Hence we seem forced to reject the hypothesis of 

 unconscious automatism on the grounds that the activi- 

 ties in question do afford data to experience, can be 

 modified, and are therefore subject to voluntary control, 

 by giving rise to sensations and feelings which enter into 

 the conscious life of the chick. 



Let us assume, then, in accordance with the second 

 possibility, that the very first peck is carried out under 

 the guidance of consciousness. Now, guidance and control 

 are based on previous experience. A chick, for example, 

 will seize the first soldier-beetle he meets with ; but 

 after one or two trials of this distasteful morsel, though 

 he may run towards one, if he catches sight of it moving 

 at some distance from him, he checks himself so soon 

 as he sees clearly what it is. He controls his tendency 

 to peck at it in the light of his previous experience of 

 its unpleasant taste. It is clear, however, that the first 

 time a chick pecks there is no individual experience in 

 the light of which the activity can be guided or controlled. 

 Hence we can only admit the second possibility on the 

 hypothesis that experience is inherited. But though 

 it is quite conceivable that the effects wrought by 

 experience are transmitted in some way, at present un- 

 explained, through heredity — that, for example, the 

 acquired skill of one generation may become congenital 

 in the next — this is something very different from the 

 inheritance of experience itself. Unless we are prepared 

 to admit some form of metempsychosis ; unless we believe 

 that the individual remembers that which happened to 

 its parents or grandparents ; — we must hold fast to the 

 fact that the conscious experience of the individual is 

 limited to the events of its own lifetime. Remembering, 



