COURTSHIP, INSTINCT AND REASON 211 



such as the use of gay costume, dancing and posing, 

 beautiful singing, sweet perfume, and gentle caresses, 

 which, at various phases of his development, he has 

 practised. True, these methods are also practised by a 

 variety of animals, but not by man's immediate ape-like 

 ancestors. None of these means of courtship are in- 

 herited instincts or structures in man as they are in animals. 

 All have been arrived at and devised by man afresh, as 

 the result of " taking thought." And in the latest advance 

 of civilization some of them have been to a large extent 

 either discarded or, curiously enough, handed over to the 

 female sex. It is the woman now who endeavours to 

 captivate the man by a display of brave colours, clothes, 

 plumes, and jewellery, and by exquisite dancing and 

 gesture. Not so long ago both sexes of man practised 

 such display, but in earliest times only the male, the 

 woman being allowed to sport a discarded rag or a broken 

 old necklace if she were very satisfactory and submissive 

 in her general conduct ! 



I must endeavour very briefly to explain how this 

 contrast of " instinct " with " thought, knowledge, reason, 

 and will " must (as it seems to me) be regarded. There 

 are three great steps in the gradual evolution of the 

 mind. The first is the slow formation (by variation and 

 survival of the fittest) of transmissible, and therefore 

 inherited, mechanisms of the mind, which are of various 

 degrees of complexity, and characterize different species 

 and kinds of animals. These mechanisms act auto- 

 matically like those of a " penny-in-the-slot machine," 

 and are just as regularly present, and as much 

 alike in all individuals of a species, as are the other 

 inherited structures, such as bones, flesh, viscera, the 

 skin and its coloured clothing of decorative feathers 

 or hair. 



