54 Luck, or Cunning ? 
individual adjustive actions which were originally intelli- 
gent may by frequent repetition become automatic, so in 
the lifetime of species actions originally intelligent may 
by frequent repetition and heredity so write their effects 
on the nervous system that the latter is prepared, even 
before individual experience, to perform adjustive actions 
mechanically which in previous generations were performed 
intelligently. This mode of origin of instincts has been 
appropriately called (by Lewes—see “‘ Problems of Life 
and Mind ”*) the ‘ lapsing of intelligence.’ ” f 
I may say in passing that in spite of the great stress laid 
by Mr. Romanes both in his ‘‘ Mental Evolution in Ani- 
mals ” and in his letters to the Atheneum in March 1884, 
on Natural Selection as an originator and developer of 
instinct, he very soon afterwards let the Natural Selection 
part of the story go as completely without saying as I do 
myself, or as Mr. Darwin did during the later years of his 
life. Writing to Nature, April 10, 1884, he said: ‘‘ To deny 
that experience in the course of successive generations ts the 
source of instinct, is not to meet by way of argument the 
enormous mass of evidence which goes to prove that this is 
the case.’’ Here, then, instinct is referred, without reser- 
vation, to ‘‘ experience in successive generations,” and this 
is nonsense unless explained as Professor Hering and I 
explain it. Mr. Romanes’ words, in fact, amount to an 
unqualified acceptance of the chapter “Instinct as In- 
herited Memory ”’ given in “ Life and Habit,” of which Mr. 
Romanes in March 1884 wrote in terms which it is not 
necessary to repeat. 
Later on :— 
“That ° practice makes perfect ’ is a matter, as I have 
previously said, of daily observation. Whether we regard 
a juggler, a pianist, or a billiard-player, a child learning 
his lesson or an actor his part by frequently repeating it, 
* Vol. I, 3rd ed., 1874, p. 141, and Problem I. 21. 
t ‘‘ Mental Evolution in Animals,” pp. 177, 178. Nov., 1883. 
