1884.] OF THE INDIVIDUAL AND OF THE SPECIES. 473 



apart from both the active force of the artist and the ideal concep- 

 tions which direct that force — the cause of the production of the 

 statue. They are a cause, they help to produce it, and are absolutely 

 necessary for its production. They are a 7naterial cause, but not the 

 primary cause. This distinction runs through all spheres of activity. 



'\^he formal discoverer of a new fossil is tlie naturalist who first 

 sees it with an instructed eye, appreciates, and describes it ; not the 

 labourer who accidentally uncovers but ignores it, and who cannot 

 be accounted to l)e, any more than the spade he handles, other than 

 a mere material cause of its discovery. So we must regard the de- 

 structive agencies of Nature as a material cause of the origin of new 

 species ; their formal cause being the reaction of the nature of 

 their parent organisms upon the sum of the multitudinous influences 

 of their environment. 



This kind of action of " the organism " — this formal cause — has 

 been compared by Mr. Alfred Wallace, and by me, with the action 

 of tlie organism in its embryonic development; and this, I have 

 further urged, is to be likened to the processes of repair and repro- 

 duction of parts of the individual after injury, and this, again, to 

 reflex action, and, finally, this last to Instinct as manifested in our- 

 selves and in other animals also. 



These relations of similarity appear to me to exist between 

 Instinct and all the various other vital actions just enumerated. 

 Instead, then, of explaining Instinct by reflex action^ (as a reflex 

 action accompanied by sensation), I would explain reflex action, pro- 

 cesses of repair, and processes of individual and specific evolution, by 

 Instinct — the wonderful action and natin-e of which we know as it exists 

 in our own personal activity. These seem to me to be all diverse 

 manifestations of one kind of activity of which Instinctive Action is 

 the best type, because by it we can to a certain extent understand the 

 others, whereas none of the others enable us to understand it. 

 Instinct contains reflex action, but reflex action does not contain 

 Instinct''. But instinctive action has a wider range still. The 

 evolution of language, of Hterature, of art, of science, of politics, are 

 also embraced by it, in so far as they take place without the inter- 

 vention of conscious and deliberate intention ; for no one can pretend 

 that human progress in these various directions was at first evolved 

 by any such deliberate and intentional action. Let us glance at 

 some simple form of language to test the truth of this assertion, 

 supposing a case in which a man and a brute are simultaneously 

 stimulated to expression by the same influences, that we may more 



' To attempt to explain Instinct by reflex action is an attempt to explain it 

 by omitting its most eminent characteristic — its practically telic nature — its 

 direction to a future, unforeseen, but generally useful end. It is like the attempt 

 to explain the building of a house by bricks, mortar, bricklayers, and hodmen, 

 oiuitling all reference to any influence governing their motions and directing 

 them towards a predetermined end which is not theirs. 



- Professor Carpenter informs me that iu a paper of his on the Voluntary 

 and Instinctive Actions of Living Beings (to be found in No. 132 of the old 

 'Edinburgh Medical and Surgical Journal'), read in 1S37, he pointed out 

 the essential similarity between Instinct and Eeflex Action. 



