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?
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