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may in a measure pass by descent; as a modified form of nest-building with a species of birds, or hunting qualities in a dog. The more, however, that acquisition partakes of the nature of knowledge, the less is it transmissible. That our highest, most penetrative insights, like those of morals or mathematics, should owe anything directly to physical inheritance, is quite opposed to the laws of heredity.

Lesson 58 - 16. Not to be referred to inheritance - p.260

(2) Such descent would also reverse the general order of progress. Instincts precede knowledge, rather than knowledge instincts. Intelligence bases itself upon the organic, instinctive life; rather than itself issues in these foundations. Habit or skill, though somewhat beyond thought, is yet thoroughly permeated with light, is something quite above instinct. The field which instinct properly covers, it tends to occupy to the exclusion of knowledge. The region of instinctive activity is a dark, opaque one. It is the deficiencies of instinct which knowledge is called on to supplement; while instinct anticipates knowledge, and, in its own direction, renders it unnecessary. The true order of growth is overlooked by this theory. Organic forces and instinct, not knowledge, initiate life; while knowledge holds its own in possession more and more perfectly. An insight that should lapse into an instinct would tend to deaden the intellect; but nowhere is our knowledge so luminous, so complete, as in our intuitions. This knowledge is at the very farthest remove from a blind, half- organic under-current. Its certainty it wins not from instinct or inheritance, but from insight.

The constructive order of the world is this: purely physical forces support and minister to organic forces; organic forces expand into and nourish instinctive forces; these in turn make way for associative processes; while associative processes prepare the ground for and find their