THE EVOLUTION OF INSTINCT 117 



as before said, little more than anticipatory touch; visual im- 

 pressions are, in all these creatures, habitually followed by 

 tactual ones. But tactual impressions are, in all these crea- 

 tures, habitually followed by contractions. . . . From the 

 zoophytes upward touch and contraction form an habitual 

 sequence; and hence, hi creatures whose incipient vision 

 amounts to little more than anticipatory touch, there con- 

 stantly occurs the succession a visual impression, a tactual 

 impression, a contraction." This habitual association will 

 link the two responses so that a contraction will follow 

 immediately upon the visual stimulus. The effect of such 

 experiences accumulated by heredity generation after 

 generation is to establish a new congenital response which 

 is of value to the species. With increased power of sensory 

 discrimination the visual stimuli produced by smaller objects 

 whose contact does not cause a protective contraction, but 

 rather the activities of food taking, may in a similar manner 

 become associated with movements of prehension, thus 

 enabling the animal to react in different ways to objects at a 

 distance. In this way Spencer supposes instincts to have 

 been built up by growing out of simple reflex acts instead of 

 being the outcome of a lapsed intelligence. Spencer's 

 conception is more congruous with the general doctrine of 

 psychic evolution and does not involve the assumption that 

 the lower we go in the animal kingdom the more purely 

 intelligent the actions of animals become. 



The theory of Spencer, which was put forward in 1855, is 

 based entirely on the assumption of the transmission of 

 acquired characters like so many other of his psychological 

 speculations. After the "Origin of Species" was published 

 Spencer accepted the theory of natural selection, but as- 

 signed to it a subordinate role, especially in the evolution 

 of mind. 



