level with my eye, so that I have been able to see what was going on
at all hours of the day. In each case the nest was made well and
rapidly up to a certain point, and then got top-heavy and tumbled
over, so that little was left on the tree: it was reconstructed and
reconstructed over and over again, always with the same result, till
at last in all three cases the birds gave up in despair. I believe
the older and stronger birds secure the fixed and best sites, driving
the younger birds to the trees, and that the art of building nests in
trees is dying out among house-sparrows.


He declares that instinct is not due to organisation so much as
organisation to instinct. {140} The fact is, that neither can claim
precedence of or pre-eminence over the other. Instinct and
organisation are only mind and body, or mind and matter; and these
are not two separable things, but one and inseparable, with, as it
were, two sides; the one of which is a function of the other. There
was never yet either matter without mind, however low, nor mind,
however high, without a material body of some sort; there can be no
change in one without a corresponding change in the other; neither
came before the other; neither can either cease to change or cease to
be; for "to be" is to continue changing, so that "to be" and "to
change" are one.


Whence, he asks, comes the desire to gratify an instinct before
experience of the pleasure that will ensue on gratification? This is
a pertinent question, but it is met by Professor Hering with the
answer that this is due to memory--to the continuation in the germ of
vibrations that were vibrating in the body of the parent, and which,