CHAPTER VIII. 

 THE GENETIC STANDPOINT IN THE STUDY OF INSTINCT. 



This chapter is composed entirely of a selection from Professor Whitman's 

 lectures on Animal Behavior delivered at the Marine Biological Laboratory at 

 Woods Hole in 1897 and 1898. Although these lectures have been published. 1 

 it has been deemed advisable to insert this selection at this point, as it presents 

 in a very succinct form the author's view of instinct in general as well as an admir- 

 able treatment of the instinct of incubation. 



GENEALOGICAL HISTORY NEGLECTED. 



The problem of psychogenesis requires a more definite genetic standpoint than that 

 of general evolution. It is not enough to recognize that instincts have had a natural origin, 

 for the fact of their connected genealogical history is of paramount importance. From the 

 standpoint of evolution as held by Romanes and others, instincts are too often viewed as 

 disconnected phenomena of independent origin. The special and more superficial charac- 

 teristics have been emphasized to the exclusion of the more fundamental characters. 



Biologists and psychologists alike have very generally clung tenaciously to the idea 

 that instincts, in part at least, have been derived from habits and intelligence; and the 

 main effort has been to discover how an instinct could become gradually stamped into 

 organization by long-continued uniform reactions to environmental influences. The central 

 question has been: How can intelligence and natural selection, or natural selection alone, 

 initiate action and convert it successively into habit, automatism, and congenital instinct? 

 In other words, the genealogical history of the structural basis being completely ignored, 

 how can the instinct be mechanically rubbed into the ready-made organism? Involution 

 instead of evolution; mechanization instead of organization; improvisation rather than 

 organic growth; specific versus phyletic origin. 



This inversion, or rather perversion, of the genealogical order leads to a very short- 

 focussed vision. The pouting instinct is supposed to have arisen de novo, as an anomalous 

 behavior, and with it a new race of pigeons. The tumbling instinct was a sort of lusus 

 nature, with which came the fancier's opportunity for another race. The pointing instinct 

 was another accident that had no meaning except as an individual idiosyncrasy. The 

 incubation instinct was supposed to have arisen after the birds had arrived and laid their 

 eggs, which would have been left to rot had not some birds just blundered into "cuddling" 

 over them and thus rescued the line from sudden extinction. How long this blunder- 

 miracle had to be repeated before it happened all the time does not matter. Purely 

 imaginary things can happen on demand. 



THE INCUBATION INSTINCT. 



1. Meaning to be sought in phyletic roots. It seems quite natural to think of incubation 

 merely as a means of providing the heat needed for the development of the egg, and to 

 assume that the need was felt before the means was found to meet it. Birds and eggs are 

 thus presupposed, and as the birds could not have foreseen the need, they could not have 

 hit upon the means except by accident. Then, what an infinite amount of chancing must 

 have followed before the first "cuddling" became a habit, and the habit a perfect instinct! 



1 Biological Lectures, Woods Hole, 1898, pp. 285-338, Boston. 



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