Wood County reporter. [volume] (Grand Rapids [i.e. Wisconsin Rapids], Wis.) 1857-1923, 1890-06-05
MIND SUPERsEDES INSTINCT.
How Man Has Lost Many Instincts Poa.
sessed by the Lower Animals.

If the doctrine be true that man is
really the heir of all the various species
and genera of the animal kingdom, it
seems little hard upon us, says the
american analyst, that even by way of
exception we inherit none of the most
marvellous instincts of those species
and genera, and have to be content
with those greater but purely human
faculties by which even the most won
derful of animal instincts haze been
somehow eXtinguished. Sir John Lub-
book maintains with a good deal of
plausibihty that there are insects, and
very likely even higher animals, which
perceive colors of which we have no
glimpse and hear sounds which are to
us inaudible. Yet we never hear of a
human retina that includes in its vision
those colors depending on vibration of
the ether which are too slow or too
rapid for our ordinary eyes, nor of
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
bloodhound. In dark night it fol-
lowed up for three miles the trail of a
thief with whom the bloodhound could
have never been in contact Che had
just purloined some rolls of tan from
the lanyard in which the doc was
chained up), and finally sat down I'M
der the tree in which the man had
taken refuge. Why, we wonder are
those finer powers for discriminating
and following the track of the scent
which so many of the lower animals
possess entirely extinguished in man.
if man be the real heir of all the va
rious genera which show power in
ferior to bis own!
We see no trace in animals of that
high enjoyment of the finer scents
which make the poisoning of the
spring flowers so great delight to
human beings, and yet men are en-
tirely destitute of that almost unerring
power of tracking the path of an odor,
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 cat to find its way back to
home to which it is attached, but
from which it has been taken by
route that it can not possibly follow on
its return, even if it had the power of
observing that route, which usually it
has not. Nothing could be more con-
venient than such power to lost
child. But no one ever heard of any
child who possessed it.
Still more enviable is that instinct
possessed by SO many birds of crossing
al, - -.!t
apparently any landmarks or seamarks
to guide them, and of reaching a quar-
ter of the globe which many of them
have never visited before, while those
who have visited it before have not
visited it often enough to learn the
way-at least by any rule which, in
like circumstances, would be of any
use to human intelligence. The mi
gratory birds must certainly be in
possession of either senses or instincts
entirely beyond the range of human
imagination, and yet no one ever heard
of the survival of such a sense of in
stinct 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
y 'thlc, ubIOI
and degrading instinct does not APP
pear to have been inherited by any of
the higher animals which intervene
between the insects and our own race;
but this only enhances the irony of our
destiny, if we do, indeed, in any sense
inherit from these insects aristocracies
one of the most disastrous instincts of
the audacious but indolent creatures
which fight so much better than they
work. If we have not inherited the
architectural instincts of bees or beav-
ers. 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
it makes itself dependent on a more
timid and Industrious species of its
own race, and thereby loses the power
to help itself
What is still more curious is that
even where human beings have who'll
ly exceptional and uuheard-of powers
they betray no traces of the exceptional
and unheard-of powers of the races
whose vital organization we are said
to inherit. The occasional appear
ance OF very rare mathematical pow
ers, for instance, so far from being in
any sense explicable 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 mathema-
tician took some time to verify, GER
tainly was not reviving in himself any
of the rare powers of the lower tribes
of animals. Nor do the prodigies in
music who show such marvellous pow
er in infancy recall to us any instinct
of the bird, the only musical creatures
except ourselves. Still less. of course,
does great moral genius-the genius of
Howard or Clarkson-suggest any
"Reminiscences of what happens in the
world of animal life.