It cannot be said that the evidence for the supposed mode of origin
of secondary instincts is sufficiently varied and cogent to carry
conviction. On the other hand, there does seem some evidence which
points to a different conclusion. When instinctive behaviour follows
on a sensory impression, not only is the co-ordination hereditary,
but there is an inherited linkage of stimulus and response. Thus in
the solitary wasps the sight of the natural prey is followed by the
appropriate modes of attack. The _Meloë_ larva springs upon anything
hairy. In chicks the sight of a small object at a certain distance
initiates the act of pecking. In moor-hens and ducklings the stimulus
of water produces the movements concerned in swimming. And so, too,
in many other examples of instinctive behaviour, we infer from the
observed facts that stimulus and response have an organic connection
founded on hereditary links in the nervous system. Now, if such
connection were due to inherited habit, we should expect them to be
established wherever the experience to which they are related has
been constant through many generations. How comes it, then, that the
chick does not instinctively respond by appropriate behaviour to the
sight of water? How comes it that young birds do not instinctively
avoid bees, and wasps, and nauseous caterpillars? If the effects of
ancestral experience be hereditary, one would surely expect that in
these cases the connection between stimulus and response--a connection
which passes into acquired habit--would have become congenital; that
the habitual behaviour would have long ago become instinctive. But this
does not appear to be the case. And with regard to disuse causing the
loss of instinct, how comes it that young chicks swim with well-ordered
leg-movements, though swimming is not an act that is habitually
performed by the members of their race?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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