io6 Instinct and its Lessons 



thereby scoring a point in the game of life ; and that 

 this act, grown into a habit, has been handed on by 

 Natural Selection, improving as it went, to the Sphex 

 of to-day. 



Now it is quite evident that so far as the ultimate treat- 

 ment of the matter is concerned this theory does not 

 strictly touch the question of purpose at all. Purpose 

 may well lie hid in that first embryo of instinct of which 

 we have perforce to take no account, but in which so 

 much was obviously contained. To say that we could 

 find no working of purposive design in all after develop- 

 ments, would be only on a par with saying that we could 

 find no vital principle in a tree but only in its roots. 

 This is sufficiently obvious, yet it appears sometimes 

 to be forgotten. It seems to be not unfrequently 

 assumed, that granting the possibility of such habits 

 having fortuitously originated, and having been handed 

 down by descent, the whole question is solved. But 

 surely not. Everything else being surrendered there 

 remains that first spark of instinct with which we all 

 must start, and that spark must be capable of develop- 

 ment, or we could none of us proceed. This very 

 capacity of development though it were only vaguely 

 and equally in all directions, would still be inexplicable 

 without a design which its development should accom- 

 plish. We do not therefore completely explain instinct 

 by calling it inherited habit ; it is not an explanation 

 merely to give a thing a name. A habit, by its very 

 essence, demands something whereof it may be a habit ; 

 it is of necessity a parasite, growing upon something else, 

 and upon something else from which it can draw its 

 vitality. Let all instinct now existent be inherited habit, 

 that does not take away the need of a first instinct 

 that was not a habit but was capable of forming 

 habits. If there be not such an original to build 

 habit upon, habit there could not be ; we might as well 

 expect to get fruit by grafting an apple upon a milestone. 



It is a still more obvious consideration that the 

 number of instances in which instinct has been handed 



