130 INSTINCT AND REASON. 



sparrow or chicken, the lion by the horse, CEstridce by horses, 

 cattle, sheep, and reindeer. 



3. Terror of fire, water, or other elements that are dan- 

 gerous to life. 



4. Barking in the dog. 



5. The finding of lost travellers by the St. Bernard breed 

 of dogs. 



6. The slave-keeping of Aphides by ants. 



7. The sense of superiority, and its expression by obe- 

 dience to leaders. 



8. The moral sense as is pointed out in a special chapter. 

 As regards any individual animal, however, such instincts 



may have been either congenital or acquired. They may have 

 been originally acquired as knowledge, experience, or habit by 

 some ancestor intensified, modified, and transmitted through 

 successive generations of offspring ; in which case they be- 

 come congenital in these oifspring. Or they may have been 

 acquired by the individual, as we constantly see taking place 

 for instance, as regards the dread of man and his instru- 

 ments of destruction in the birds of unvisited oceanic 

 islands. But in this case we refer the acquired dread to 

 knowledge or experience, because we see for ourselves its origin 

 and growth; and it is only when a dread so acquired is 

 transmitted to and through generations of offspring that 

 are subject to a like experience, and when this natural fear 

 appears at or immediately after birth in any such offspring, 

 prior to the possible acquisition of experience by them, 

 that we describe it as an instinct, as innate or intuitive, 

 implanted by nature, not contributed or produced by ex- 

 perience. 



It is frequently most difficult, if not impossible, in given 

 cases to distinguish congenital from acquired aptitudes. One 

 would suppose a. priori that sucking the milk receptacle of a 

 mother, or the selection of other suitable food, or the lap- 

 ping of water or milk by the dog or cat, must be an t innate ' 

 faculty ; and yet we are assured by careful and conscientious 

 experimentalists that these operations, with many others that 

 appear to be congenitally instinctive or intuitive, are really 

 acquired arts, the result of education and time. 



