28 Heredity. 



all its physical and moral characteristics. The Evolutionists, on 

 the other hand, hold that instincts, as they now exist, are very 

 complex, formed by the gradual accumulations of time and heredity. 

 They must be subjected to a careful analytical process, each 

 stratum must be taken apart ; by comparison, induction, and 

 analogy we must determine which are of more recent formation, 

 and must descend from these, step by step, to the more ancient 

 strata. Proceeding thus from the complex to the simple, we arrive 

 at certain very lowly mental manifestations, which we may regard 

 as the source from which the entire series is derived. 



Thus we have, at the outset, a minimum of intelligence, a some- 

 thing which plays in mental life the part of the cell in physio- 

 logical life ; then come actions and reflex actions, which by con- 

 stant repetition are changed into habits and fixed by heredity; 

 next we have variations, also passing into habits, and similarly fixed 

 by heredity in short, we have a sum of hereditary habits. Such, 

 according to the Evolutionist school, is the genesis of instincts. 



Darwin has developed this theory with consummate science and 

 ability. He has boldly addressed himself to the most complicated, 

 the most wonderful, and the most inexplicable instincts ; those, for 

 instance, of the ant and the bee has striven to show how these 

 singular phenomena may have arisen, by selection and heredity, 

 out of a few very simple instincts. 



If we take the honey-bee as it now exists, without comparing 

 it to any other animal ; if we assume that from the first it con- 

 structed cells, as it does now, we are filled with astonishment, but 

 cannot explain the fact But if we recur to the principle of 

 gradual transitions, and seek to establish a series of transitional 

 steps, * Nature will perhaps herself reveal to us her method of 

 creation.' Let us, then, compare the bee with the melipona and 

 the humble-bee. 



The humble-bee exhibits only very rude instincts. It deposits 

 its honey in old cocoons, with the occasional addition of short 

 tubes of wax. Sometimes also it constructs isolated cells of an 

 irregular globose shape. 



Between the perfect cells of the honey-bee and the rude sim- 

 plicity of those of the humble-bee stand the cells of the domesticated 

 melipona of Mexico, as an intermediate degree. The melipona 



