Instinct and its Lessons 105 



the production of such instincts as we find actually in 

 operation ? Can we suppose that the multiform habits 

 we find among the brutes, have all been beaten out of 

 the primordial instinctive germ by no agent of more 

 directive tendency than the sledge-hammer of destructive 

 forces ? This question resolves itself into two. Is it 

 conceivable that the habits now instinctive, originated 

 in fortuitous acts; 1 acts which proving advantageous 

 have by Natural Selection been perpetuated as habits ? 

 In the next place, granting it possible that blind forces 

 should have elaborated machinery so complicated as 

 some habits exhibit, could those habits descend from 

 one generation to another, unless there were in a 

 creature's very nature something inducing the descent ? 



Both these questions Darwinians answer in the affirma- 

 tive. To employ again the example already brought, 

 they say that the instinct of the Sphex is sufficiently 

 accounted for by the possibility that one of its ancestors 

 had the luck to hit upon just the proper nerve to sting, 2 



1 Objection will probably be taken to this term fortuitous. It 

 will be said that there is no such thing as chance ; that if a stone 

 cast at random hits a Swallow, given the path of stone and bird, 

 their impact is not fortuitous but necessary. Of course it is ; 

 but that does not eliminate the fortuitous coincidence of the paths, 

 creating the necessity. Chance is the coincidence of independent 

 phenomena ; phenomena not co-ordinated to an end. The action 

 of rain and frost, weathering the surface of a stone, must produce 

 in it some shape or other ; but should a bust of Napoleon result, 

 the likeness would be due to chance. If the phenomena of develop- 

 ment and external force be not determined towards the survival 

 of certain forms, their survival is fortuitous. If the phenomena be 

 so determined, then chance vanishes; but so does, likewise, the 

 Darwinian hypothesis. 



2 There is indeed another explanation offered: that of "lapsed 

 intelligence," thus stated by Mr. Romanes (Mental Evolution in 

 Animals , p. 301) : "I can see no alternative but to conclude that 

 these wasp-like animals owe their present instincts to the high 

 intelligence of their ancestors, who found from experience the 

 effects of stinging thus, and consequently practised the art of 

 stinging till it became an instinct." In spite, however, of the 

 high scientific authority of its advocates, it will seem to most 

 readers that such a theory does not demand to be seriously 

 discussed. 



