290 Darwin, and after Darwin. 
I cannot wait to give any lengthy quotations from 
this representative exponent of scientific opinion upon 
the subject at that time ; but its general drift may be 
appreciated if I transcribe merely the short concluding 
paragraph, wherein he sums up his general results. 
Here he says :— 
It thus only remains for us to regard instinct as a mental 
faculty, sw¢ generds, the gift of God to the lower animals, that 
man in his own person, and by them, might be relieved from the 
meanest drudgery of nature. 
Now, here we have the most extraordinary illus- 
tration that is imaginable of the obscuring influence 
of a preconceived idea. Because he started with the 
belief that instincts mzvst have been implanted in 
animals for the benefit of man, this writer, even when 
writing a purely scientific essay, was completely 
blinded to the largest, the most obvious, and the most 
important of the facts which the phenomena of instinct 
display. For, as amatter of fact, among all the many 
thousands of instincts which are known to occur in 
animals, there is no single one that can be pointed to 
as having any special reference to man; while, on the 
other hand, it is equally impossible to point to one 
which does not refer to the welfare oft the animal 
presenting it. Indeed, when the point is suggcsted, 
it seems to me surprising how few in number are the 
instincts of animals which have proved to be so much 
as of secondary or accidental benefit to man, in the 
same way as skins, furs, and a whole host of other 
animal products are thus of secondary use to him. 
Therefore, this wiiter not only failed to perceive the 
most obvious truth that every instinct, without any 
single exception, has reference to the animal which 
