252 Habit and Instinct. 



display exceptional ability, it is due, they say, to a con- 

 genital tendency quite independent of individual acquisi- 

 tion. What is he but another chip of the same old 

 mathematical block ? 



Now, let us not attempt to hide or slur over the con- 

 clusion which is the inevitable outcome of these contentions, 

 supposing them well founded. Under no circumstances, if 

 natural selection be all-sufficient, can an intelligent act 

 become hereditary and instinctive. Intelligence and instinct 

 are antithetical ; the former can never pass into the latter 

 or take any direct share in its evolution. If, then, natural 

 selection have any effect in rendering instinctive such a 

 habit as we are now considering, it must be working on a 

 congenital tendency, independent of, but proceeding towards 

 the same end as, intelligence. The simulation of the 

 actions of a wounded bird, if it be due to the play of 

 intelligence, cannot, on selectionist principles, become in- 

 stinctive. And if such apparent simulation be really an 

 instinctive activity, and be due to natural selection, it is 

 on congenital variations, not on intelligent modifications 

 of active response, that natural selection has been operative ; 

 while the fact that congenital variation on the one hand, 

 and intelligent choice on the other, coincide in direction 

 and tend to the same result, is seemingly fortuitous — is a 

 coincidence and nothing more. But if it can justly be 

 so regarded, it is scarcely a matter for surprise that the 

 transmissionist finds this doctrine of coincidence somewhat 

 hard of acceptance as compared with the hypothesis, which 

 he himself adopts, of vital and genetic connection between 

 the one and the other, the acquired intelligence of one 

 generation becoming, or at least tending to become, the 

 inherited instinct of the next. 



The coincidence, if it may be so called, loses much of 

 its force, however, when we consider that intelligent 



