'Instinct goes astray,' it is often said; but in truth it does not go astray, but is only not so highly specialized in relation to the liberating stimulus of the action as seems to us necessary for perfect purposiveness. But in this very imperfection there lies, as it seems to me, another proof that we have to do with the results of a process of selection, for it is of the very nature of these never to be perfect, but only relatively perfect, that is to say, just as perfect as is necessary to the maintenance of the species. At the moment at which this grade of perfection is reached every possibility of a further increase in the effectiveness of adjustment to the end ceases, because it would then no longer directly further the end. Why, for instance, should the liberating stimulus in this case be more highly specialized, since enough of the _Sitaris_ larvæ already succeed in attaching themselves to female bees? It is not for nothing that the beetles of this family are so prolific; what is lacking in the perfection of the instinct is made up for by the multitude of young larvæ. A single female of the oil-beetle (_Melöe_) lays several hundred eggs. In speaking of the animal as a machine, it must be added that it is a machine which can be altered in varying degrees, which can be regulated to work at high or low pressure, slowly or quickly, finely or roughly. This regulating is the work of the intelligence, the limited 'thinking-power,' which must be ascribed to the higher animals in a very considerable degree, but which in the lower animals becomes less and less apparent, until finally it is unrecognizable. That instinctive actions can be modified or inhibited by intelligence and will is proved by any trained beast of prey which masters its hunger and the impulse to snap at the piece of flesh held before it, because it knows that if it does not control itself painful blows will be the consequence. In a later lecture I shall return to the connexion between will and instinct; all that concerns us here is to regard instincts as the outcome of the processes of selection, and as an indirect proof of the reality of these. From what I have already said at least so much must be clear, that nothing, in principle, stands in the way of referring instincts to selection, since their very essence is their adaptation to an end, and such purposive changes are precisely those that are preserved in the struggle for existence. It might, however, be supposed that in all this the principle of use and disuse also had a share, and that without it no changes in instincts could have come about. There are, however, numerous instincts in considering which this can be entirely excluded.