And this nervous system has been so trained during a limitless past that its responses are the ones which are necessary for the welfare of its owner. It can do a hundred things without having to wait to learn them. Burdette says of the new-born child, "Nobody told him what to do. Nobody taught him. He knew. Placed suddenly on the guest list of this old caravansary, he knew his way at once to two places in it--his bedroom and the dining-room." A thousand generations of babies had done the same thing in the same way, and each had made it a little easier for this particular baby to do his part without learning how. DEFINITION OF INSTINCT.--_Instincts are the tendency to act in certain definite ways, without previous education and without a conscious end in view._ They are a tendency to _act_; for some movement, or motor adjustment, is the response to an instinct. They do not require previous _education_, for none is possible with many instinctive acts: the duck does not have to be taught to swim or the baby to suck. They have no conscious _end_ in view, though the result may be highly desirable. Says James: "The cat runs after the mouse, runs or shows fight before the dog, avoids falling from walls and trees, shuns fire and water, etc., not because he has any notion either of life or death, or of self, or of preservation. He has probably attained to no one of these conceptions in such a way as to react definitely upon it. He acts in each case separately, and simply because he cannot help it; being so framed that when that particular running thing called a mouse appears in his field of vision he _must_ pursue; that when that particular barking and obstreperous thing called a dog appears he _must_ retire, if at a distance, and scratch if close by; that he _must_ withdraw his feet from water and his face from flame, etc. His nervous system is to a great extent a pre-organized bundle of such reactions. They are as fatal as sneezing, and exactly correlated to their special excitants as it to its own."[6] You ask, Why does the lark rise on the flash of a sunbeam from his meadow to the morning sky, leaving a trail of melody to mark his flight? Why does the beaver build his dam, and the oriole hang her nest? Why are myriads of animal forms on the earth today doing what they were countless generations ago? Why does the lover seek the maid, and the mother cherish her young? _Because the voice of the past speaks to the present, and the present has no choice but to obey._