Instinct and its Lessons tic) 



if it were so, why should that tribe fight to prevent 

 it, and suffer mutilation and death in the struggle? 

 By what possible process can it have been brought 

 about, that black queens and drones should have 

 been so selected as to produce neuter insects, which 

 will make good slaves for red ants, at the same time 

 handing on to their progeny an instinct that makes 

 them perish in the attempt to avoid that very service 

 for which they have been so laboriously prepared? 

 Here, then, we are clearly beyond the sphere of 

 possibility itself, and I cannot see how in this case, 

 at any rate, the Darwinian explanation is even "to 

 the imagination far more satisfactory." 



The case of neuter instincts would then seem to 

 be final, as against the theory, but there are many 

 others, which, to some minds at least, will appear 

 equally conclusive. Such, for example, are the actions 

 performed by many animals and by many human 

 infants, absolutely without instruction or previously 

 acquired knowledge. We know from the experience 

 of our own minds that our reason is not self-sufficient, 

 that it requires a premiss on which to build a con- 

 clusion, and can judge how to act, only by drawing 

 upon the teachings of authority or of experience. 

 We all know how to proceed to eat our dinner, but 

 we do not know how we learnt to take our first 

 sustenance. What taught us that the lips and not 

 the hands were the proper organs to employ? Obvi- 

 ously not reason, which would have been utterly 

 powerless in such a case. Yet there was a guide 

 which directed us, and directed us rightly, the voice 

 of instinct. 



This, Mr. Wallace 1 seems inclined to deny, on the 

 ground that "this is one of the simple acts depending 

 on organization." Most unquestionably; but instinct 

 is precisely a part of the organization, and for animals 

 the most essential part of all. Nor, as we have seen, 

 can it be explained away, by calling it inherited habit, 

 1 On Natural Selection^ p. 206. 



