INSTINCT AS INHERITED MEMORY. (CHAPTER XI. OF LIFE AND HABIT.)
Obviously the memory of a habit or experience will not commonly be
transmitted to offspring in that perfection which is called "instinct,"
till the habit or experience has been repeated in several generations
with more or less uniformity; for otherwise the impression made will not
be strong enough to endure through the busy and difficult task of
reproduction. This of course involves that the habit shall have
attained, as it were, equilibrium with the creature's sense of its own
needs, so that it shall have long seemed the best course possible,
leaving upon the whole and under ordinary circumstances little further to
be desired, and hence that it should have been little varied during many
generations. We should expect that it would be transmitted in a more or
less partial, varying, imperfect, and intelligent condition before
equilibrium had been attained; it would, however, continually tend
towards equilibrium.
When this stage has been reached, as regards any habit, the creature will
cease trying to improve; on which the repetition of the habit will become
stable, and hence capable of more unerring transmission--but at the same
time improvement will cease; the habit will become fixed, and be perhaps
transmitted at an earlier and earlier age, till it has reached that date
of manifestation which shall be found most agreeable to the other habits
of the creature.
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