WONDERS OF INSTINCT 211 
course of ages the fountain of change in the germ- 
cells has supplied material for cumulative improve- 
ments in structure, in the creature’s instruments. 
In the course of ages the same fountain has supplied 
material for cumulative improvements in the 
controlling organization, the nervous system, objec- 
tively regarded, the mental life subjectively regarded. 
The correlation of improved control and improved 
instruments is effected in the slow winnowing of 
Natural Selection, which always operates in definite 
reference to a particular set of often-recurrent or 
absolutely critical external circumstances. These, 
in turn, may gradually become more intricate and 
subtle, and thus act as an evolving sieve. We 
agree with those who find it difficult to think over 
a complicated case of instinctive routine without 
the hypothesis that it is suffused with some degree 
of awareness and sustained by some degree of 
endeavor. We find no warrant for regarding 
instinct as a sort of low-grade intelligence, still 
less as the result of lapsed intelligence. We think 
Fabre was nearer the truth with his phrase “ inborn 
inspiration,” and that we make difficulties for our- 
selves by trying to give purely physiological explana- 
tions of what is, like memory, a more than physio- 
logical phenomenon. It seems to have been part 
of the tactics of Nature to enregister capacity in 
the organism so as to give it greater freedom for 
fresh adventure. In the case of instinctive capacity, 
which gives the creature a rapid mastery of intricate 
situations, the enregistration has sometimes outshot 
