THE WAYS OF LIFE 203 



answers of a profitable kind — variations in reflex actions, 

 for instance — become the beginnings of new instincts. 



After Darwin came a period of critical discussion. The 

 two chief theories of the origin of instincts were specialized 

 and pitted against one another. Spencer, Haeckel, Preyer, 

 and Wundt were prominent among the supporters of the 

 Lamarckian interpretation — that instincts represent the 

 inherited results of experience. A young pointer points 

 because its ancestors were taught to point. An intelli- 

 gently acquired familiarity with a certain sequence of 

 actions ingrains itself, first, in the individual — as a habit, 

 and, second, on the race — as an instinct, the intelligence 

 lapsing. But other instincts, it was suggested, may have 

 arisen from a lower level, namely from reflex actions, such 

 as closing the eye on the approach of a missile, or the 

 sucking of the babe when it is put to its mother's breast. 

 If a series of reflexes occur often in a certain routine, 

 they may become interlocked with a certain inevitableness, 

 and the entailment of the results of the frequent 

 repetition of such a sequence may give rise, so the theory 

 ran, to an instinct. Both forms of the theory postulate 

 the transmission of the results of experience, but on the 

 first supposition the experience is intelligent, on the second 

 it is simply reflex. 



For many years the first form of the theory — that 

 instinct represents lapsed intelligence — held the field, and 

 it is certainly a very attractive interpretation. IntelHgent 

 activities, such as playing the piano, become by long 

 practice habitual. They cease to require concentrated 

 intelligent control ; they suHer what is badly called 

 mechanization ; and the brain is left freer for something else. 

 The intricate routine is somehow ingrained in the individual 



