206 



FACTS AND FANCIES 



invariably; and xi diminish^id or changed, it 

 would prove useless i'cr its purpose. It is 

 not, like human inventions, slowly perfected 

 under the influence of thought and imagination, 

 and laboriously taught by each generation to 

 its successors : it is inherited by each genera- 

 tion in all its perfection, and from the first 

 goes directly to its end as if it were a merely 

 physical cause. 



The favorite explanation of instinct from 

 the side of Agnostic Evolution is that it orig- 

 inated in the struggle for existence of some 

 previous generation, and was then perpetuated 

 as an inheritance. But, like most of the other 

 explanations of this school, this quietly takes 

 for granted what should be proved. That 

 instinct is hereditary is evident; but the ques- 

 tion is. How did it begin ? and to say simply 

 that it did begin at some former period is to 

 tell us nothing. From a scientific point of 

 view, the invariable operation of any natural 

 law afifords no evidence of any gradual or 

 sudden origination of it at any point of past 

 time ; and when such law is connected with a 

 complicated organism and various other laws 

 and processes of the external world, the sup- 

 position of its slowly arising from nothing 



