voice of the past speaks to the present, and the present has no choice but to obey.
Instincts Are Racial Habits.—Instincts are the habits of the race which it
bequeaths to the individual; the individual takes these for his start, and then
modifies them through education, and thus adapts himself to his environment.
Through his instincts, the individual is enabled to short-cut racial experience,
and begin at once on life activities which the race has been ages in acquiring.
Instinct preserves to us what the race has achieved in experience, and so starts us
out where the race left off.
Unmodified Instinct is Blind.—Many of the lower animal forms act on instinct
blindly, unable to use past experience to guide their acts, incapable of education.
Some of them carry out seemingly marvelous activities, yet their acts are as
automatic as those of a machine and as devoid of foresight. A species of mud
wasp carefully selects clay of just the right consistency, finds a somewhat
sheltered nook under the eaves, and builds its nest, leaving one open door. Then
it seeks a certain kind of spider, and having stung it so as to benumb without
killing, carries it into the new-made nest, lays its eggs on the body of the spider
so that the young wasps may have food immediately upon hatching out, then
goes out and plasters the door over carefully to exclude all intruders. Wonderful
intelligence? Not intelligence at all. Its acts were dictated not by plans for the
future, but by pressure from the past. Let the supply of clay fail, or the race of
spiders become extinct, and the wasp is helpless and its species will perish.
Likewise the race of bees and ants have done wonderful things, but individual
bees and ants are very stupid and helpless when confronted by any novel
conditions to which their race has not been accustomed.
Man starts in as blindly as the lower animals; but, thanks to his higher mental
powers, this blindness soon gives way to foresight, and he is able to formulate
purposeful ends and adapt his activities to their accomplishment. Possessing a
larger number of instincts than the lower animals have, man finds possible a
greater number of responses to a more complex environment than do they. This
advantage, coupled with his ability to reconstruct his experience in such a way
that he secures constantly increasing control over his environment, easily makes
man the superior of all the animals, and enables him to exploit them for his own
further advancement.