[page] 14

INSTINCT.

The Standard, in an article on Mr. Darwin's posthumous essay on Instinct, admits that many of the best known facts regarding instinct may be, without much violence, shaken into some niche in the Darwinian theory, Yet, as Mr. Darwin allows, there are so many difficulties to be accounted for that we are for the present formulating inferences which the premises do not justify. Take, for example, the question of variable instincts, These may, perhaps, favour the doctrine that the animals adopting them gain advantages In the struggle for existence which aid in the preservation of the fittest, but, on the other hand, it is impossible to admit of instinct being defined as "acts pursued without necessary knowledge of the relation between the means employed and the ends attained," when a bird or a mammal will alter what is regarded as an instinctive habit in order to suit the altered conditions of its life.

Among the vast accumulation of facts narrated in Mr. Darwin's paper many such instances were noted, On every side we are faced by difficulties, if we try to draw a hard and fast line between instinct and reason, At the same time, there is no cause why we should not –

temporarily, at least –agree with Mr. Darwin in regarding the young cuckoo ejecting its foster-brothers, ants making slaves the larvae of the ichneumidæ feeding within the live bodies of their prey, cats playing with mice, and otters and cormorants with living fish, "not as instincts specially given by the Creator, but as very small parts of one general law leading to the advancement of all organic bodies –Multiply, vary; let the strongest live, and the weakest die."