"Instinct appears stationary. It does not, like intelligence, seem to
grow and decay, to gain and to lose. It does not improve."
Naturally. For improvement can only as a general rule be looked for
along the line of latest development, that is to say, in matters
concerning which the creature is being still consciously exercised. Older
questions are settled, and the solution must be accepted as final, for
the question of living at all would be reduced to an absurdity, if
everything decided upon one day was to be undecided again the next; as
with painting or music, so with life and politics, let every man be fully
persuaded in his own mind, for decision with wrong will be commonly a
better policy than indecision--I had almost added with right; and a firm
purpose with risk will be better than an infirm one with temporary
exemption from disaster. Every race has made its great blunders, to
which it has nevertheless adhered, inasmuch as the corresponding
modification of other structures and instincts was found preferable to
the revolution which would be caused by a radical change of structure,
with consequent havoc among a legion of vested interests. Rudimentary
organs are, as has been often said, the survivals of these interests--the
signs of their peaceful and gradual extinction as living faiths; they are
also instances of the difficulty of breaking through any cant or trick
which we have long practised, and which is not sufficiently troublesome
to make it a serious object with us to cure ourselves of the habit.
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