THE SURVIVAL OF INSTINCTS. .91 



It is not probable that animals possess savage qualities other than 

 such as are or were originally of service to them and their kind. We 

 cannot understand that any quality or habit should be developed in 

 an animal which was not serviceable to it ; but it is certain that both 

 may arise from the wants and necessities incident to its condition. 



If strength and fleetness are essential in pursuit, so also is sagacity 

 in eluding it. An element of danger is detected and removed. A fox 

 will use every precaution that the hound may not be allured by his 

 odor, and the white urus destroys its weak comrade which falls in the 

 rear unable to maintain its place in the flight. The habit with some 

 animals of destroying their weak companions is. only one of many 

 which by repetition becomes at last common to the kind. With the 

 repetition of the act grows a disposition or tendency to repeat it as 

 the exciting cause or condition recurs. It becomes thus in the creat- 

 ure a tendency which we may term instinctive, and that such tenden- 

 cies are transmissible and are inherited needs no illustration here. 

 Perhaps there is no fact in biology more clearly established and more 

 fearfully significant than this, and it is true equally in man and in the 

 lower animals. 



Habits thus developed do not readily disappear, but the old dispo- 

 sition or instinct may remain after the habit has been discontinued, 

 and long after it has ceased to be of service to the creature. This is 

 shown by the fact that former habits frequently reappear when sug- 

 gested by former predisposing conditions, although these may have 

 been long overlooked or forgotten. 



Under domestication many habits indispensable to animals in their 

 wild state become useless, and slowly but surely disappear, while 

 others are developed, and the animal undergoes a physical and mental 

 change ; but the time is very long before old instincts die out beyond 

 the possibility of resuscitation. They appear to continue in animals 

 under domestication as do those of the savage, in civilized life, despite 

 culture and education. We will illustrate by a single instance : 



With the savage, hunting is the occupation of life. He hunts from 

 necessity, and his mental, moral, and physical being, are attuned to its 

 conditions. His hunting habits and hunting dispositions are thor- 

 oughly instinctive, but in civilized communities the necessity for hunt- 

 ing has chiefly disappeared. Still, the field and forest are hunting- 

 grounds. The savage is not there, but who will say that the old in- 

 stincts have not survived in the cunning of pursuit, the thoughtless 

 cruelty of destruction, and indifference to suffering ? It is true our 

 modern hunter has grown gentle, humane, and tender, in a thousand 

 directions, but the enjoyment of him who hunts merely for sport 

 cannot be in that spirit which has developed with his culture — which 

 weeps at the sight of agony, and is tender to the " mournful eloquence 

 of pain." 



We refer to this only to illustrate the persistence of instinctive 



