[361] P. A. Chadbourne: Instinct, p. 28 (New York, 1872).
[362] "It would be very simple-minded to suppose that bees follow their queen, and protect her and care for her, because they are aware that without her the hive would become extinct. The odor or the aspect of their queen is manifestly agreeable to the bees—that is why they love her so. Does not all true love base itself on agreeable perceptions much more than on representations of utility?" (G. H. Schneider, Der Thierische Wille, p. 187.) A priori, there is no reason to suppose that any sensation might not in some animal cause any emotion and any impulse. To us it seems unnatural that an odor should directly excite anger or fear; or a color, lust. Yet there are creatures to which some smells are quite as frightful as any sounds, and very likely others to which color is as much a sexual irritant as form.
[363] Der Thierische Wille, pp. 282-3.
[364] In the instincts of mammals, and even of lower creatures, the uniformity and infallibility which, a generation ago, were considered as essential characters do not exist. The minuter study of recent years has found continuity, transition, variation, and mistake, wherever it has looked for them, and decided that what is called an instinct is usually only a tendency to act in a way of which the average is pretty constant, but which need not be mathematically 'true.' Cf. on this point Darwin's Origin of Species: Romanes's Mental Evol., chaps. xi to xvi incl., and Appendix; W. L. Lindsay's Mind in Lower Animals, vol. i. 133-141: ii. chaps. v, xx; and K. Semper's Conditions of Existence in Animals, where a great many instances will be found.
[365] Spalding, Macmillan's Magazine, Feb. 1878, p. 287.
[366] Ibid. p. 289.
[367] For the cases in full see Mental Evolution in Animals, pp. 213-317.
[368] Transactions of American Neurological Association, vol. i. p. 129 (1875).
[369] "Mr. Spalding," says Mr. Lewes (Problems of Life and Mind, prob. i. chap. ii. § 22, note), "tells me of a friend of his who reared a gosling in the kitchen, away from all water; when this bird was some months old, and was taken to a pond, it not only refused to go into the water, but when thrown in scrambled out again, as a hen would have done. Here was an instinct entirely suppressed." See a similar observation on ducklings in T. R. R. Stebbing: Essays on Darwinism (London, 1871), p. 73.
[370] Senses and Intellect. 3d ed. pp. 413-675.