Diversions of a NaturalistLankester, E. Ray (Edwin Ray), Sir
History
Diversions of a Naturalist
Lankester, E. Ray (Edwin Ray), Sir
Natural history
are, and come into action as soon as the necessary growth of the parts
involved is attained, without hesitation or tentative trial. They are
ready made. The terms "instinct" and "instinctive" should be limited to
the action of this inherited apparatus or mechanism.
All animals, including man, have more or less of such an inherited
instinctive nervous apparatus. Man, or for the matter of that an
animal, may be "conscious" (in the sense of being "aware") of the
stimulus given to this inherited apparatus, and of its related action,
or he may be "unconscious" of either. The point is that we have here
the "working" of an apparatus inherited in a complete working state;
it is, therefore, what we call instinctive. On the other hand, there
are in higher animals, and especially in man, a vast number of actions
performed which are not the outcome of an inborn ready-made nervous
mechanism. On the contrary, these actions are determined by a mechanism
built up in the animal during its individual existence--a mechanism
which is formed by its individual experience acting on its nerve-cells,
and is the outcome of observation, comparison, and, more or less, of
processes which we call judgment and reasoning. The persistence of
this mechanism built up by the individual, as well as its continuous
elaboration and development, is what we call "memory," unconscious or
conscious. It is misleading to speak of "inherited memory" or "race
memory," and to apply it in any way to the inherited mechanisms of
instinct; the word should be reserved in its ordinary limitation to
an individual's record. This new and superior apparatus appears to
require a much larger bulk of brain-substance for its elaboration than
that which is sufficient for the inherited mechanisms of instinct. It
works in closer response to the innumerable details of the individual
case, and so must be much more complicated, and we can well believe
must require a larger instrument. Obviously it is an advantage to its
possessor. He (be he animal or man) is provided not with a simple
response suitable for the average of incidents in his life, but has,
by the "education" due to the circumstances in which his individual
life is carried on, formed an ever-increasing store of special little
mechanisms, giving the useful or advantageous response which he has
himself discovered to be appropriate to this or that sign, sound,
colour, shape, smell, touch, or what not which may assail his senses.
In proportion as the brain increases in volume (especially that part
of it which is called "the cortex of the hemispheres") the animal to
which that brain belongs loses--gets rid of--inherited mechanisms
or instincts, and becomes "educable," that is to say, capable of
forming for itself new individual brain mechanisms based on memorized
experience.
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