WONDERS OF INSTINCT 211 



course of ages the fountain of change in the germ- 

 cells has supplied material for cumulative improve- 

 ments in structure, in the creature's instruments. 

 In the course of ages the same fountain has supplied 

 material for cumulative improvements in the 

 controlling organization, the nervous system, objec- 

 tively regarded, the mental life subjectively regarded. 

 The correlation of improved control and improved 

 instruments is effected in the slow winnowing of 

 Natural Selection, which always operates in definite 

 reference to a particular set of often-recurrent or 

 absolutely critical external circumstances. These, 

 in turn, may gradually become more intricate and 

 subtle, and thus act as an evolving sieve. We 

 agree with those who find it difficult to think over 

 a complicated case of instinctive routine without 

 the hypothesis that it is suffused with some degree 

 of awareness and sustained by some degree of 

 endeavor. We find no warrant for regarding 

 instinct as a sort of low-grade intelligence, still 

 less as the result of lapsed intelligence. We think 

 Fabre was nearer the truth with his phrase " inborn 

 inspiration/' and that we make difficulties for our- 

 selves by trying to give purely physiological explana- 

 tions of what is, like memory, a more than physio- 

 logical phenomenon. It seems to have been part 

 of the tactics of Nature to enregister capacity in 

 the organism so as to give it greater freedom for 

 fresh adventure. In the case of instinctive capacity, 

 which gives the creature a rapid mastery of intricate 

 situations, the enregistration has sometimes outshot 



