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"
{54a}) the 'lapsing of intelligence.'" {54b}

I may say in passing that in spite of the great stress laid by Mr.
Romanes both in his "Mental Evolution in Animals" and in his letters
to the Athenaeum in March 1884, on Natural Selection as an
originator and developer of instinct, he very soon afterwards let
the Natural Selection part of the story go as completely without
saying as I do myself, or as Mr. Darwin did during the later years
of his life. Writing to Nature, April 10, 1884, he said: "To deny
THAT EXPERIENCE IN THE COURSE OF SUCCESSIVE GENERATIONS IS THE
SOURCE OF INSTINCT, is not to meet by way of argument the enormous
mass of evidence which goes to prove THAT THIS IS THE CASE." Here,
then, instinct is referred, without reservation, to "experience in
successive generations," and this is nonsense unless explained as
Professor Hering and I explain it. Mr. Romanes' words, in fact,
amount to an unqualified acceptance of the chapter "Instinct as
Inherited Memory" given in "Life and Habit," of which Mr. Romanes in
March 1884 wrote in terms which it is not necessary to repeat.

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