60 Luck, or Cunning ? 
to be in substantial agreement. He adopts, but (probably 
quite unconsciously) in his anxiety to avoid appearing to 
adopt, he obscures what he is adopting. 
Here, for example, is Mr. Romanes’ definition of 
instinct :— 
“Instinct is reflex action into which there is imported 
‘the element of consciousness. The term is therefore a 
generic one, comprising all those faculties of mind 
which are concerned in conscious and adaptive action, 
antecedent to individual experience, without necessary 
knowledge of the relation between means employed and 
ends attained, but similarly performed under similar and 
frequently recurring circumstances by all the individuals 
of the same species.”’* 
If Mr. Romanes would have been content to build frankly 
upon Professor Hering’s foundation, the soundness of 
which he has elsewhere abundantly admitted, he might 
have said— 
“« Instinct is knowledge or habit acquired in past genera- 
tions—the new generation remembering what happened to 
it before it parted company with the old. More briefly, 
Instinct is inherited memory.” Then he might have added 
a rider— 
“ Tf a habit is acquired as a new one, during any given 
lifetime, it is not an instinct. If having been acquired in 
one lifetime it is transmitted to offspring, it is an instinct 
in the offspring, though it was not an instinct in the 
parent. If the habit is transmitted partially, it must be 
considered as partly instinctive and partly acquired.” 
This is easy ; it tells people how they may test any action 
so as to know what they ought to call it; it leaves well 
alone by avoiding all such debatable matters as reflex 
action, consciousness, intelligence, purpose, knowledge of 
purpose, &c. ; it both introduces the feature of inheritance 
* “Mental Evolution in Animals,” p. 159. Kegan Paul & Co., 
1883. 
