Social Transmission and Instinct 65 



the supposition which makes the use-hypothesis unneces- 

 sary. Thus kept alive, the species has all the time necessary 

 to perfect the variations required by a complete instinct} 

 And when we bear in mind that the variation required is, 

 as was shown above, not on the muscular side to any great 

 extent, but in the central brain connections, and is a slight 

 variation for functional purposes at the best, the hypothesis 

 of use-inheritance becomes, to my mind, not only unneces- 

 sary, but quite superfluous. 



§ 4. Social Transmission and Instinct 



II. There is also another great resource open to the 

 Darwinian in this matter of instinct ; also a psychological 

 resource. Weismann and others have shown that the 

 influence of animal intercourse, seen in maternal instruc- 

 tion, imitation, gregarious cooperation, etc., is very impor- 

 tant. Wallace dwells upon the actual facts which illustrate 

 the 'imitative factor,' as we may call it, in the personal 

 development of young animals. It is argued above that 

 Spencer and others are in error in holding that social 

 progress demands the use-inheritance hypothesis; 2 since 

 the socially-acquired actions of a species, notably man, are 

 socially handed down, giving a sort of ' social transmission ' 

 which supplements physical heredity. And when we 

 come to inquire into the actual mechanism of imitation 

 on the part of a young animal, we find much the same sort 

 of function involved as in intelligent adaptation. The 

 impulse to imitate requires the ability to act out for him- 



1 Italicized in this reprinting (as is done in the preceding paper) as antici- 

 pating the full statement of the theory of ' Organic Selection ' later on, 



2Cf. Science, Aug. 23, 1895, the preceding paper; summarized in Nature, 

 Vol. LII., 1895, P- 627. 



