936 
that to which reflex action alone can adapt 
them. The element of consciousness and 
its outcome, choice, are introduced. The 
conscious animal, unlike the unconscious, 
is enabled to choose between two or more 
courses, to which two or more instincts im- 
pel him. Thus the male spider approaches 
the gigantic female, guided by both the 
mating and life-preserving instincts, and 
all the complications of his subsequent 
conduct are due to his power of choice be- 
tween two or more courses. 
Higher in the scale, concurrently with 
the evolution of the power of acquiring 
physical traits (properly so called), is 
evolved the power of acquiring mental 
traits. It increases in successively higher 
animals, and at length, in the highest ani- 
mals, becomes of such importance that it 
overshadows and replaces instinct, which, 
since it no longer holds a commanding 
place as a factor in survival, undergoes 
great retrogression.* If I can make my 
readers grasp all that is implied in the 
above I think they will admit the vast im- 
portance I have claimed for my subject— 
an importance which is not only from the 
standpoint of the man of science, but from 
many other standpoints, such as those of 
the moralist, the sociologist, the statesman, 
the philanthropist, the physician and others 
as well. 
Let us contrast two animals which, for 
convenience, we may regard as at opposite 
ends of the scale, the dragon-fly and man. 
Tennyson’s beautiful lines*occur tome. I 
quote from memory : 
To-day I saw the dragon-fly 
Come from the wells where he did lie. 
*Just as physical characters (e. g., limbs of serpent, 
lost digits of horse, eye of proteus) undergo retrogres- 
sion through atavism, wherebymore and more remote 
ancestral conditions are reverted to till that remote 
ancestral character is reverted to, when the character 
did not exist. Vide The Present Evolution of Man, 
pp. 18-30. 
SCIENCE. 
LN. S. Von. VI. No. 156. 
An inner impulse rent the veil 
Of his old husk. From head to tail 
Came out clear plates of sapphire mail. 
He dried his wings ; like gauze they grew. 
O’er crofts and pastures, wet with dew, 
A living flash of light he flew. 
Physically, like other low animals, the 
dragon-fly does not develop in response to 
exercises and use, or, if he does, it is to a 
very small extent compared to higher ani- 
mals. Natural selection has nicely co- 
ordinated his structures, but has not 
evolved in them (at least to an appreciable 
extent) the power of developing further 
and in the right direction during the chang- 
ing stress of circumstances. For example, 
his principal organs of locomotion, his wings 
and the structures which subserve them, 
are certainly wholly inborn. Mentally, at 
the beginning of each stage of his existence 
he is able to coordinate his muscles per- 
fectly, and thus at the beginning of each 
stage his locomotion is apparently as good 
as attheend. Both in the water and in the 
air he knows what food to seek, and what 
enemies to avoid, and how to do so. At 
the fit time, impelled by an inborn impulse, 
he leaves the water, and, having under- 
gone his last metamorphosis, is able, at 
once, to adapt himself to life in an entirely 
new environment, where the medium in 
which he exists, his mode of locomotion, his 
prey and his enemies are different, and 
where his procreating instinct comes into 
activity. Butexperience teaches him little 
or nothing ; he cannot acquire mental traits; 
in other words, he has little or no memory. 
Far different is the case with man. We 
have seen how much he acquires physically, 
so that the adult differs from the infant - 
mainly in traits which he acquires, not in 
those which are inborn. Mentally, his 
powers of acquirement are even more re- 
markable; and, therefore, even more as re- 
gards his mental characters than as regards 
his physical characters, the adult differs 
