378 THE HISTORY AND SCOPE OF ZOOLOGY IX 



similar surrounding objects. The advantage to the 

 animal of this imitation of surrounding objects is that 

 it escapes the pursuit of (say) a bird which would, 

 were it not deceived by the resemblance, attack and 

 eat the caterpillar. Now it is clear that preceding 

 generations of caterpillars cannot have acquired this 

 habit of posturing by experience. Either the cater- 

 pillar postures and escapes, or it does not posture and 

 is eaten ; it is not half eaten and allowed to profit by 

 experience. We seem to be justified in assuming that 

 there are many movements of stretching and posturing 

 possible to caterpillars, and that some caterpillars had 

 a congenital fortuitous tendency to one position, some 

 to another, and, finally, that among all the variety of 

 habitual movements thus exhibited one has been 

 selected and perpetuated because it coincided with the 

 necessary conditions of safety, since it happened to 

 give the caterpillar an increased resemblance to a twig. 



The view that instinct is the hereditarily fixed 

 result of habit derived from experience has hitherto 

 dominated all inquiry into the subject, but we may 

 now expect to see a renewed and careful study of 

 animal instincts carried out with the view of testing 

 the applicability to each instance of the pure Darwin- 

 ian theory without the aid of Lamarckism. 



The whole of this inquiry has special importance 

 in regard to mankind, since the great questions of 

 influence of race and family as opposed to the influ- 

 ence of education are at issue. If pure Darwinism is 

 to be accepted, then education has no value in directly 

 affecting the mental or physical features of the race, 



