98 MIND IN EVOLUTION CHAP. 



inquisitor's conception of Christian charity is similarly cor- 

 rupted by the subtle corporate egoism of a Church and the 

 cruel pedantry of bad theology. Even the Emperor has 

 some conception of civilisation, but it is the civilisation of 

 militarism. In all cases there impinge on the avowed plan 

 of action conflicting impulses of a kind not to stop the 

 course of action, but to merge in it and distort it. Speak- 

 ing generally, man is only in part conscious of his own 

 purposes in their real meaning and value. It is his own 

 nature of which, after all, he only knows the surface 

 which sets him his purpose, and impels him to carry jt out. 

 Hence, between the course in which his own character is 

 driving him and the end which he recognises and formu- 

 lates to himself, there is room for wide discrepancy. Now, 

 if we imagine this original structure more elaborately 

 worked out in its details, so as to dominate action more 

 completely, and the sphere of intelligence reduced, so as to 

 grasp ends less adequately, we seem to approach a condition 

 realised in those instincts which admit some play of in- 

 telligence within their sphere. To reach <c pure instinct 

 we have only to conceive the sphere of intelligence gradu- 

 ally reduced to zero, while the original mechanism is further 

 elaborated so as to provide for each separate response to 

 each new phase of a normal situation. 



There is a further point. The psychologist is apt to 

 characterise an instinct by what he knows of its function 

 in the life of the species, and either to attribute to the 

 animal the purpose of fulfilling that function or to deny 

 it all intelligent purpose whatever. Thus, at first blush, 

 the neglect of parasites by the wasp, or the sealing of an 

 empty nest, seems to reduce all the other care and trouble 

 which the insect shows to a piece of meaningless stupidity, 

 which we can only explain by referring it to an elaborate 

 but blindly working mechanism. But here, again, the 

 human parallel should help us. To the evolutionist, the 

 youth courting the maid is merely obeying an impulse 

 cunningly contrived by Nature for the preservation of the 

 species. But suppose the courting fails, and in the end the 

 youth dies an old bachelor for the sake of his only love, 

 what become's of Nature's cunning contrivance ? The 

 outh, so far as his conscious interests go, has nothing to 



