The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1890-04-06
MIND supERssDas INSTINCT.
How Man Has Lost Many Instincts
Possessed by the Lower Animals.

How Man Has Lost Many Instincts
Possessed by the LoweE Animals.
If the doctrine be true that maa is really
the heir of all the various species and gen
era of the animal kingdom, it seems G lit
tie hard upon US, says the American
analyst, that even by way Of exception
we inherit none of the most marvel
Gus instincts of those species and
genera, and have to be content with those
greater but purely human faculties by
which even the most wonderful of animal
instincts have been somehow extin-
guished. Sir John Lubbock maintains
with a good deal of FEASIBILITY that there
are insects; and very likely eve higher
animals, which perceive coiors of which we
have no glimpse and hear sounds which are
to Us inaudible. Yet we never hear of
human retina tha5 includes in its vision
those coors depending on vibrations of the
ether which are too slow or too rapid for
our ordinary eyes, nor of a human ear
which is entranced with music that to the
great majority of our species is absolutely
inaudible.
Again, we never hear of a human being
who could perform the feat, of which we
were told only recently, of a bloodhound.
In dark night it followed up for three
miles the trail OF thief with whom the
bloodhounds could have never been in con-
| tact (he had just purloinei some roll of tan
from the tan yard in which the dog was
chained up), aud finally sat down under
the tree in which the man had taxe refuga.
Why, we wonder. are those finer powers
for discriminating and following the track
of the scent which so many of the lower
animals pos esS entirely eXtnguiShed in
man, if man be the real heir of all the vari-
Gus genera which show power inferior to
his own
We sea no trace in animals of that high
en- ioyment of the finer scents which make
the bLossoming Of the spring flowers SO
great delight to human beings, and yet
men are entirely destitute of that almost
II erring power of tracking the path of an
DIOR, which seems to be one of the principal
gifts of many quadrupeds and some birds.
1t Is the same with the power of dog or
ca to find its way back to a home to which
it is attached, bu5 from which it has been
taken bg rOute that it cannot possibly
follow on its return, even il it had the
power Of Observing that route, which usually
it has not. Nothing could be more conve-
nient than such q power TO a lost child.
But no one ever heard Of any child who
possessed it,
Still more envable is that instinct pos
sessed by so many birds of crossing great
tracts or land and sea without apparently
any landmarks or scenarios TO guide them,
and of reaching quarter of the globe
before, while those who have visited it
before have no. visited it often enough to
earn the way-at least by any rule which,
iii like circumstances. would be Of any use
to human Intelligence. The migratory
birds must certainlY be in possession of
either senses o." instincts entirely beyond
the range of human Imagination, and yet
no one ever heard of the survival of such a
sense of instinct in any member of our race
1t may be said, indeed, that men have
either Inherited or reproduced the slave
making instinct OF some of the military
ants, though that unfortunate and
degrading Instinct does not appe tr 10 have
been inherited by any of the higher AMI
mails which intervene between the insects
and our own race; bat this only hances
the irony of cur destiny, if we do, indeed
Ia aay sense inherit from these insect aris-
tocracieS one of the most disastrous in
Stincts OF the audaclous but indolent crea-
lures which fight so much better than they
work. Ii we have not inherited the archi-
tectural instincts of bees or beavers, nor
the spinning instincts of SPIDERS nor the
power of the dog to track out his home, it is
little sad that We should have inherited
the one disastrous instinct of the ant by
which 1t makes itself dependent on 81 more
timid and Industrious species of its own
race, and thereby loses the power to help
itself.
w bdJ is SILL more CURIOUS Is IudL even
where human beings have wholly excep-
tional and unhe lrd-of powers, they betray
no traces Of the exceptional aud unheard-of
powers of the races whose vital organiza-
ZION we are said to inherit The occasional
appearance Of very rare mathematical
powers, for instances, So far from being in
any sense applicable from below, looks
much more like inspiration from above The
calculating boy who could not even give any
account Of the process whereby he arrived
at correct results which the educated
mathematician took some time TO verify,
certainly was not rsviving in himself any of
the rare powers of the lower tribes of
animals. Nor do the prodigies in music
who show such ma rvelous power in infancy
recall to us any instinct of the bird the only
musical creature except ourselves. Still
less, of course, does great moral genius-the
genius of Howard or a Clarks1n-suggest
any reminIscence of what happens in the
world of animal life