vement 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.

"If it does not remain perfectly invariable, at least it only varies
within very narrow limits; and though this question has been warmly
debated in our day and is yet unsettled, we may yet say that in instinct
immutability is the law, variation the exception."

This is quite as it should be. Genius will occasionally rise a little
above convention, but with an old convention immutability will be the
rule.

"Such," continues M. Ribot, "are the admitted characters of instinct."

Yes; but are they not also the admitted characters of habitual actions
that are due to memory?

* * * * *

M. Ribot says a little further on: "Originally man had considerable
trouble in taming the animals which are now domesticated; and his work
would have been in vain had not heredity" (memory) "come to his aid. It
may be said that after man has modified a wild animal to his will, there
goes on in its progeny a silent conflict between two heredities"
(memories), "the one tending to fix the acquired modifications and the
other to preserve the primitive instincts. The latter ofte