678 PSTCIIOLOGT. 



ture goes. It can be due neither to our own nor to our an- 

 cestors' experience. I now pass to those practical parts of 

 our organic mental structure. Things are a little different 

 here ; and our conclusion, though it lies in the same direc- 

 tion, can be by no means as confidently expressed. 



To be as short and simj)le as possible, I will take the 

 case of instincts, and, supposing the reader to be familiar 

 with Chapter XXIV, I will plunge in medias res. 



THE ORIGIN OF INSTINCTS. 



Instincts must have been either 



1) Each specially created in complete form, or 



2) Gradually evolved. 



As the first alternative is nowadays obsolete, I proceed 

 directly to the second. The two most jjrominent sugges- 

 tions as to the way in which instincts may have been evolved 

 are associated with the names of Lamarck and Darwin. 



Lamarck's statement is that animals have wants, and 

 contract, to satisfy them, habits which transform themselves 

 gradually into so many propensities which they can neither 

 resist nor change. These propensities, once acquired, prop- 

 agate themselves by way of transmission to the young, so 

 that they come to exist in new individuals, anteriorly to all 

 exercise. Thus are the same emotions, the same habits, 

 the same instincts, perpetuated without variation from one 

 generation to another, so long as the outward conditions 

 of existence remain the same.^ Mr. Lewes calls this the 

 theory of ' lapsed intelligence.' Mr. Spencer's words are 

 clearer than Lamarck's, so that I will quote from him : t 



* Philosophie Zoologique, 3me partie, chap, v., 'de I'lnstinct.' 

 f It should be said that Mr. Spencer's most formal utterance about in- 

 stinct is in his Principles of Psychology, in the chapter under that name. 

 Dr. Romanes has reformulated and criticised the doctrine of this chapter 

 in his Mental Evolution in Animals, chapter xvii. I must confess my in- 

 ability to state its vagueness in intelligible terms. It treats instincts as a 

 further development of reflex actions, and as forerunners of intelligence, — 

 which is ])robably true of many. Hut when it ascribes their formation to 

 the mere 'multiplication of experiences,' which, at first simple, mould 

 the nervous system to 'correspond to outer relations' by simple reflex 

 actions, and, afterwards complex, make it 'correspond' by 'compound 

 reflex actions,' it becomes too mysterious to follow without more of a key 

 than is given. The whole thing becomes perfectly simple if we suppose 

 the reflex actions to be accidental inborn idiosyncrasies preserved. 



