Obviously the memory of a habit or experience will not commonly be
transmitted to offspring in that perfection which is called "instinct,"
till the habit or experience has been repeated in several generations
with more or less uniformity; for otherwise the impression made will not
be strong enough to endure through the busy and difficult task of
reproduction. This of course involves that the habit shall have
attained, as it were, equilibrium with the creature's sense of its own
needs, so that it shall have long seemed the best course possible,
leaving upon the whole and under ordinary circumstances little further to
be desired, and hence that it should have been little varied during many
generations. We should expect that it would be transmitted in a more or
less partial, varying, imperfect, and intelligent condition before
equilibrium had been attained; it would, however, continually tend
towards equilibrium.
When this stage has been reached, as regards any habit, the creature will
cease trying to improve; on which the repetition of the habit will become
stable, and hence capable of more unerring transmission--but at the same
time improvement will cease; the habit will become fixed, and be perhaps
transmitted at an earlier and earlier age, till it has reached that date
of manifestation which shall be found most agreeable to the other habits
of the creature. It will also be manifested, as a matter of course,
without further consciousness or reflection, for people cannot be always
opening up settled questions; if they thought a matter all over yesterday
they cannot think it all over again to-day, what they thought then they
will think now, and will act upon their opinion; and this, too, even in
spite sometimes of misgiving, that if they were to think still further
they could find a still better course. It is not, therefore, to be
expected that "instinct" should show signs of that hesitating and
tentative action which results from knowledge that is still so imperfect
as to be actively self-conscious; nor yet that it should grow or vary
perceptibly unless under such changed conditions as shall baffle memory,
and present the alternative of either invention--that is to say,
variation--or death.
But every instinct must have passed through the laboriously intelligent
stages through which human civilisations _and mechanical inventions_ are
now passing; and he who would study the origin of an instinct with its
development, partial transmission, further growth, further transmission,
approach to more unreflecting stability, and finally, its perfection as
an unerring and unerringly transmitted instinct, must look to laws,
customs, _and machinery_ as his best instructors. Customs and machines
are instincts _and organs_ now in process of development; they will
assuredly one day reach the unconscious state of equilibrium which we
observe in the structures and instincts of bees and ants, and an approach
to which may be found among some savage nations. We may reflect,
however, not without pleasure, that this condition--the true
millennium--is still distant. Nevertheless the ants and bees seem happy;
perhaps more happy than when so many social questions were in as hot
discussion among them as other and not dissimilar ones will one day be
amongst ourselves.
And this, as will be apparent, opens up the whole question of the
stability of species, which we cannot follow further here, than to say,
that according to the balance of testimony, many plants and animals do
appear to have reached a phase of being from which they are hard to
move--that is to say, they will die sooner than be at the pains of
altering their habits--true martyrs to their convictions. Such races
refuse to see changes in their surroundings as long as they can, but when
compelled to recognise them, they throw up the game because they cannot
and will not, or will not and cannot, invent.
This is perfectly intelligible, for a race is nothing but a long-lived
individual, and like any individual, or tribe of men whom we have yet
observed, will have its special capacities and its special limitations,
though, as in the case of the individual, so also with the race, it is
exceedingly hard to say what those limitations are, and why, having been
able to go so far, it should go no further. Every man and every race is
capable of education up to a certain point, but not to the extent of
being made from a sow's ear into a silk purse. The proximate cause of
the limitation seems to lie in the absence of the wish to go further; the
presence or absence of the wish will depend upon the nature and
surroundings of the individual, which is simply a way of saying that one
can get no further, but that as the song (with a slight alteration)
says:--
"Some breeds do, and some breeds don't,
Some breeds will, but this breed won't:
I tried very often to see if it would,
But it said it really couldn't, and I don't think it could."
* * * * *
M. Ribot in his work on Heredity {119} writes (p. 14):--"The duckling
hatched by the hen makes straight for water." In what conceivable way
can we account for this, except on the supposition that the duckling
knows perfectly well what it can and what it cannot do with water, owing
to its recollection of what it did when it was still one individuality
with its parents, and hence, when it was a duckling before?
"The squirrel, before it knows anything of winter, lays up a store of
nuts. A bird when hatched in a cage will, when given its freedom, build
for itself a nest like that of its parents, out of the same materials,
and of the same shape."
If this is not due to memory, "even an imperfect" explanation of what
else it can be due to, "would," to quote from Mr. Darwin, "be
satisfactory."
"Intelligence gropes about, tries this way and that, misses its object,
commits mistakes, and corrects them."
Yes. Because intelligence is of consciousness, and consciousness is of
attention, and attention is of uncertainty, and uncertainty is of
ignorance or want of consciousness. Intelligence is not yet thoroughly
up to its business.
"Instinct advances with a mechanical certainty, hence comes its
unconscious character. It knows nothing either of ends, or of the means
of attaining them: it implies no comparison, judgment, or choice."
This is assumption. What is certain is that instinct does not betray
signs of self-consciousness as to its own knowledge. It has dismissed
reference to first principles, and is no longer under the law, but under
the grace of a settled conviction.
"All seems directed by thought."
Yes; because all _has been_ in earlier existences directed by thought.
"Without ever arriving at thought."
Because it has _got past thought_, and though "directed by thought"
originally, is now travelling in exactly the opposite direction. It is
not likely to reach thought again, till people get to know worse and
worse how to do things, the oftener they practise them.
"And if this phenomenon appear strange, it must be observed that
analogous states occur in ourselves. _All that we do from
habit_--_walking_, _writing_, _or practising a mechanical act_, _for
instance_--_all these and many other very complex acts are performed
without consciousness_.
"Instinct appears stationary. It does not, like intelligence, seem to
grow and decay, to gain and to lose. It does not improve."
Naturally. For improvement can only as a general rule be looked for
along the line of latest development, that is to say, in matters
concerning which the creature is being still consciously exercised. Older
questions are settled, and the solution must be accepted as final, for
the question of living at all would be reduced to an absurdity, if
everything decided upon one day was to be undecided again the next; as
with painting or music, so with life and politics, let every man be fully
persuaded in his own mind, for decision with wrong will be commonly a
better policy than indecision--I had almost added with right; and a firm
purpose with risk will be better than an infirm one with temporary
exemption from disaster. Every race has made its great blunders, to
which it has nevertheless adhered, inasmuch as the corresponding
modification of other structures and instincts was found preferable to
the revolution which would be caused by a radical change of structure,
with consequent havoc among a legion of vested interests. Rudimentary
organs are, as has been often said, the survivals of these interests--the
signs of their peaceful and gradual extinction as living faiths; they are
also instances of the difficulty of breaking through any cant or trick
which we have long practised, and which is not sufficiently troublesome
to make it a serious object with us to cure ourselves of the habit.
"If it does not remain perfectly invariable, at least it only varies
within very narrow limits; and though this question has been warmly
debated in our day and is yet unsettled, we may yet say that in instinct
immutability is the law, variation the exception."
This is quite as it should be. Genius will occasionally rise a little
above convention, but with an old convention immutability will be the
rule.
"Such," continues M. Ribot, "are the admitted characters of instinct."
Yes; but are they not also the admitted characters of habitual actions
that are due to memory?
* * * * *
M. Ribot says a little further on: "Originally man had considerable
trouble in taming the animals which are now domesticated; and his work
would have been in vain had not heredity" (memory) "come to his aid. It
may be said that after man has modified a wild animal to his will, there
goes on in its progeny a silent conflict between two heredities"
(memories), "the one tending to fix the acquired modifications and the
other to preserve the primitive instincts. The latter often get the
mastery, and only after several generations is training sure of victory.
But we may see that in either case heredity" (memory) "always asserts its
rights."
How marvellously is the above passage elucidated and made to fit in with
the results of our recognised experience, by the simple substitution of
the word "memory" for heredity.
* * * * *
I cannot refrain from bringing forward a few more instances of what I
think must be considered by every reader as hereditary memory. Sydney
Smith writes:--
"Sir James Hall hatched some chickens in an oven. Within a few minutes
after the shell was broken, a spider was turned loose before this very
youthful brood; the destroyer of flies had hardly proceeded more than a
few inches, before he was descried by one of these oven-born chickens,
and, at one peck of his bill, immediately devoured. This certainly was
not imitation. A female goat very near delivery died; Galen cut out the
young kid, and placed before it a bundle of hay, a bunch of fruit, and a
pan of milk; the young kid smelt to them all very attentively, and then
began to lap the milk. This was not imitation. And what is commonly and
rightly called instinct, cannot be explained away under the notion of its
being imitation." (Lecture xvii. on Moral Philosophy.)
It cannot, indeed, be explained away under the notion of its being
imitation, but I think it may well be so under that of its being memory.
Again, a little further on in the same lecture as that above quoted from,
we find:--
"Ants and beavers lay up magazines. Where do they get their knowledge
that it will not be so easy to collect food in rainy weather as it is in
summer? Men and women know these things, because their grandpapas and
grandmammas have told them so. Ants hatched from the egg artificially,
or birds hatched in this manner, have all this knowledge by intuition,
without the smallest communication with any of their relations. Now
observe what the solitary wasp does; she digs several holes in the sand,
in each of which she deposits an egg, though she certainly knows not (?)
that an animal is deposited in that egg, and still less that this animal
must be nourished with other animals. She collects a few green flies,
rolls them up neatly in several parcels (like Bologna sausages), and
stuffs one parcel into each hole where an egg is deposited. When the
wasp worm is hatched, it finds a store of provision ready made; and what
is most curious, the quantity allotted to each is exactly sufficient to
support it, till it attains the period of wasphood, and can provide for
itself. This instinct of the parent wasp is the more remarkable as it
does not feed upon flesh itself. Here the little creature has never seen
its parent; for by the time it is born, the parent is always eaten by
sparrows; and yet, without the slightest education, or previous
experience, it does everything that the parent did before it. Now the
objectors to the doctrine of instinct may say what they please, but young
tailors have no intuitive method of making pantaloons; a new-born mercer
cannot measure diaper; nature teaches a cook's daughter nothing about
sippets. All these things require with us seven years' apprenticeship;
but insects are like Moliere's persons of quality--they know everything
(as Moliere says) without having learnt anything. 'Les gens de qualite
savent tout, sans avoir rien appris.'"
How completely all difficulty vanishes from the facts so pleasantly told
in this passage when we bear in mind the true nature of personal
identity, the ordinary working of memory, and the vanishing tendency of
consciousness concerning what we know exceedingly well.
My last instance I take from M. Ribot, who writes:--"Gratiolet, in his
_Anatomie Comparee du Systems Nerveux_, states that an old piece of
wolf's skin, with the hair all worn away, when set before a little dog,
threw the animal into convulsions of fear by the slight scent attaching
to it. The dog had never seen a wolf, and we can only explain this alarm
by the hereditary transmission of certain sentiments, coupled with a
certain perception of the sense of smell." ("Heredity," p. 43.)
I should prefer to say "we can only explain the alarm by supposing that
the smell of the wolf's skin"--the sense of smell being, as we all know,
more powerful to recall the ideas that have been associated with it than
any other sense--"brought up the ideas with which it had been associated
in the dog's mind during many previous existences"--he on smelling the
wolf's skin remembering all about wolves perfectly well.