10 



HABIT AND INTELLIGENCE. 



[chap. 



sexual, domestic, and social affection — the conscious feeling 

 and the rational determination are developed later than 

 the instinctive impulse, and are developed out of it. 

 Eeason differs from instinct only in being conscious. 

 Instinct is unconscious reason, and reason is conscious 

 instinct. 



NOTE. 



INSTINCT. 



Instincts 

 of social 

 insects 

 cannot be 

 inherited. 



Darwin's 

 explana- 

 tion by 

 natural 

 selection. 



I think 

 them due 

 to Intelli- 

 gence. 



Darwin endeavours to account for instinct, as for all other facts 

 of life, by the law of natural selection. Concerning the instincts 

 of social insects — bees, wasps, and ants — there is this peculiar 

 difficulty, that characters cannot be inherited in the direct line, 

 because the working insects have their reproductive organs un- 

 developed, and cannot propagate. Darwin points out this dififi- 

 culty, and rephes to it that natural selection may be applied to 

 families as well as to individuals. He believes that the cell- 

 budding instinct of the bee, for instance, has been perfected by 

 the survival of those swarms which constructed the most perfect 

 hexagons, and consequently used their was the most economically. 

 This explanation postulates, what is certainly probable, that 

 the same variation will affect all, or the great majority, of the 

 bees of the same swarm. But I cannot think it a satisfactory 

 explanation; and those who agree with me on the subject 

 of Organizing Intelligence will have no difficulty in believing 

 that instinct also is really a case of intelligence, though rm- 

 conscious. 



The instincts of the social insects are the most wonderful in 

 the animal creation, but there are many others, the origin of 

 which is equally hard to guess at. The nest-building instinct 

 which is general among birds may perhaps be prompted by a 

 kind of half-conscious intelligence. But we can scarcely attribute 

 this to fishes ; and yet there are at least two species of fishes — 

 the Stickleback and the Gobius niger — that make nests. ^ And 



1 Carpenter's Comparative Physiology, p. 96i. 



