Translation from Hering 83 



explanation which has not, indeed, been given yet, but 

 the time for which appears to be rapidly approaching. 



When, in accordance with its instinct, the caterpillar 

 becomes a chrysalis, or the bird builds its nest, or the bee 

 its cell, these creatures act consciously and not as blind 

 machines. They know how to vary their proceedings 

 within certain limits in conformity with altered circum- 

 stances, and they are thus liable to make mistakes. They 

 feel pleasure when their work advances and pain if it is 

 hindered ; they learn by the experience thus acquired, 

 and build on a second occasion better than on the first ; 

 but that even in the outset they hit so readily upon the 

 most judicious way of achieving their purpose, and that 

 their movements adapt themselves so admirably and 

 automatically to the end they have in view — surely this 

 is owing to the inherited acquisitions of the memory of 

 their nerve substance, which requires but a touch and it 

 will fall at once to the most appropriate kind of activity, 

 thinking always, and directly, of whatever it is that may 

 be wanted. 



/ Man can readily acquire surprising kinds of dexterity 

 \if he confines his attention to their acquisition. Special- 

 isation is the mother of proficiency. He who marvels 

 at the skill with which the spider weaves her web should 

 bear in mind that she did not learn her art all on a sudden, 

 but that innumerable generations of spiders acquired it 

 toilsomely and step by step — this being about all that, as 

 a general rule, they did acquire. Man took to bows and 

 arrows if his nets failed him — the spider starved. Thus we 

 see the body and — what most concerns us — the whole 

 nervous system of the new-born animal constructed before- 

 hand, and, as it were, ready attuned for intercourse with 

 the outside world in which it is about to play its part, by 

 means of its tendency to respond to external stimuli in the 

 same manner as it has often heretofore responded in the 

 persons of its ancestors. 



We naturally ask whether the brain and nervous system 



