The Modern Theory of Instinct 367 



phila's instinct to its source. We suffer to-day, 

 more than we ever did, from a mania for 

 explaining what might well be incapable of ex- 

 planation. There are some — and their number 

 seems to increase daily — who settle the stupen- 

 dous question with magnificent audacity. Give 

 them half-a-dozen cells, a bit of protoplasm and 

 a diagram for demonstration ; and they will 

 account to you for everything. The organic 

 world, the intellectual and moral world, every- 

 thing derives from the original cell, evolving 

 by means of its own energies. It 's as simple 

 as A B C. Instinct, roused by a chance action 

 that has proved favourable to the animal, is an 

 acquired habit. And men argue on this basis, 

 invoking natural selection, heredity, the struggle 

 for life. I see plent^^ of big words, but I should 

 prefer a few small facts. These little facts I 

 have been collecting and catechizing for nearly 

 forty years ; and their replies are not exactly 

 in favour of current theories. 



You tell me that instinct is an acquired 

 habit, that a casual circumstance, propitious 

 to the animal's offspring, was the first to prompt 

 it. Let us look into the thing more closely. 

 If I understand aright, we must suppose some 

 Ammophila, in a very remote past, to have 

 accidentally injured her caterpillar's nervous 

 centres ; to have found herself the gainer by 



