Heredity of Instincts. 33 



see in what has just been said anything more than a probable 

 outline of the development of instincts. It will always be impos- 

 sible to explain instincts as they are, in their endless varieties and 

 complications. The data are inaccessible, and even were they 

 accessible, it would be impossible to grasp them in their entirety. 



We need not here pass judgment on this theory of the origin of 

 instinct : the matter is beside our purpose, as well as beyond our 

 powers. Evidently, this question is connected with the origin of 

 species ; and science has not yet solved it, if it ever will be solved. 

 Should Darwin's doctrine be confirmed, it must then be admitted 

 that all instincts have been acquired, and that what is now fixed 

 was at first variable ; that all stability comes from heredity, which 

 conserves and accumulates, and that in the formation of instincts 

 heredity is supreme. 



However alluring the hypothesis of evolution may appear by its 

 simplicity and breadth, it is not without difficulties in the region of 

 facts. It explains many of these, but there are others at which it 

 stumbles. We need only consider the objection drawn from the 

 existence of neuter insects, which, though possessed of a structure 

 of their own, and of peculiar instincts, still, being sterile, cannot 

 propagate their kind. The formation of the wonderful instinct of 

 working ants cannot, on this hypothesis, be explained, for among 

 neuters this instinct cannot have been developed by selection and 

 heredity. Darwin strives to explain this very ingeniously, while he 

 admits that at first the facts appeared to be full of so great difficulty 

 as even to overturn his theory. In the present state of science, it 

 is not possible to say whether an instinct is the result of hereditary 

 habit, or a primitive, natural, and irreducible fact. There is no 

 mark whereby we might make a distinction. 



Restricting ourselves within the bounds of the question which 

 immediately concerns us, we would remark that the conventional 

 saying, that ' instinct is hereditary habit ' is so vague and incom- 

 plete as to be inaccurate. f Habit is a disposition acquired through 

 the continuance of the same acts ; it therefore necessarily pre- 

 supposes a primitive act or state, whereof it is a repetition. > I 

 possess the habit of painting, writing, calculating, only because at 

 first I painted, wrote or calculated painfully and slowly, and by a 

 special effort of my will. If instinct is a habit, it is a habit of some- 



