CHAPTER XI.
INSTINCT AS INHERITED MEMORY.
I have already alluded to M. Ribot’s work on “Heredity,” from which I will now take the following passages.
M. Ribot writes:—
“Instinct is innate, i.e., anterior to all individual experience.” This I deny on grounds already abundantly apparent; but let it pass. “Whereas intelligence is developed slowly by accumulated experience, instinct is perfect from the first” (“Heredity,” p. 14).
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, for reasons which will appear more fully later on.
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 become 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 over yesterday they cannot think it all over again to-day, but will adopt for better or worse the conclusion then reached; and this, too, even in spite sometimes of considerable 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, 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 poised 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. And 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.”
It may perhaps be maintained, that with time and patience, one might train a rather stupid plough-boy to understand the differential calculus. This might be done with the help of an inward desire on the part of the boy to learn, but never otherwise. If the boy wants to learn or to improve generally, he will do so in spite of every hindrance, till in time he becomes a very different being from what he was originally. If he does not want to learn, he will not do so for any wish of another person. If he feels that he has the power he will wish; or if he wishes, he will begin to think he has the power, and try to fulfil his wishes; one cannot say which comes first, for the power and the desire go always hand in hand, or nearly so, and the whole business is nothing but a most vicious circle from first to last. But it is plain that there is more to be said on behalf of such circles than we have been in the habit of thinking. Do what we will, we must each one of us argue in a circle of our own, from which, so long as we live at all, we can by no possibility escape. I am not sure whether the frank acceptation and recognition of this fact is not the best corrective for dogmatism that we are likely to find.
We can understand that a pigeon might in the course of ages grow to be a peacock if there was a persistent desire on the part of the pigeon through all these ages to do so. We know very well that this has not probably occurred in nature, inasmuch as no pigeon is at all likely to wish to be very different from what it is now. The idea of being anything very different from what it now is, would be too wide a cross with the pigeon’s other ideas for it to entertain it seriously. If the pigeon had never seen a peacock, it would not be able to conceive the idea, so as to be able to make towards it; if, on the other hand, it had seen one, it would not probably either want to become one, or think that it would be any use wanting seriously, even though it were to feel a passing fancy to be so gorgeously arrayed; it would therefore lack that faith without which no action, and with which, every action, is possible.