Just as in the lifetime of the individual adjustive actions which were
originally intelligent may by frequent repetition become automatic, so
in the lifetime of species actions originally intelligent may by
frequent repetition and heredity so write their effects on the nervous
system that the latter is prepared, even before individual experience,
to perform adjustive actions mechanically which in previous
generations were performed intelligently. This mode of origin of
instincts has been appropriately called (by Lewes--see Problems of
Life and Mind {233b}) the 'lapsing of intelligence.'" {233c}
Later on:--
"That 'practice makes perfect' is a matter, as I have previously said,
of daily observation. Whether we regard a juggler, a pianist, or a
billiard-player, a child learning his lesson or an actor his part by
frequently repeating it, or a thousand other illustrations of the same
process, we see at once that there is truth in the cynical definition
of a man as a 'bundle of habits.' And the same of course is true of
animals." {234a}
From this Mr. Romanes goes on to show "that automatic actions and
conscious habits may be inherited," {234b} and in the course of doing
this contends that "instincts may be lost by disuse, and conversely that
they may be acquired as instincts by the hereditary transmission of
ancestral experience.
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