Y.M. The first animal started it, its descendants have inherited it.

O.M. How did the first one come to start it?

Y.M. I don't know; but it didn't THINK it out.

O.M. How do you know it didn't?

Y.M. Well--I have a right to suppose it didn't, anyway.

O.M. I don't believe you have. What is thought?

Y.M. I know what you call it: the mechanical and automatic putting
together of impressions received from outside, and drawing an inference
from them.

O.M. Very good. Now my idea of the meaningless term "instinct" is, that
it is merely PETRIFIED THOUGHT; solidified and made inanimate by habit;
thought which was once alive and awake, but it become unconscious--walks
in its sleep, so to speak.

Y.M. Illustrate it.

O.M. Take a herd of cows, feeding in a pasture. Their heads are all
turned in one direction. They do that instinctively; they gain nothing
by it, they have no reason for it, they don't know why they do it. It
is an inherited habit which was originally thought--that is to say,
observation of an exterior fact, and a valuable inference drawn from
that observation and confirmed by experience. The original wild ox
noticed that with the wind in his favor he could smell his enemy in time
to escape; then he inferred that it was worth while to keep his nose
to the wind. That is the process which man calls reasoning. Man's
thought-machine works just like the other animals', but it is a better
one and more Edisonian. Man, in the ox's place, would go further, reason
wider: he would face part of the herd the other way and protect both
front and rear.

Y.M. Did you stay the term instinct is meaningless?

O.M. I think it is a bastard word. I think it confuses us; for as a rule
it applies itself to habits and impulses which had a far-off origin in
thought, and now and then breaks the rule and applies itself to habits
which can hardly claim a thought-origin.

Y.M. Give an instance.

O.M. Well, in putting on trousers a man always inserts the same old leg
first--never the other one. There is no advantage in that, and no sense
in it. All men do it, yet no man thought it out and adopted it of set
purpose, I imagine. But it is a habit which is transmitted, no doubt,
and will continue to be transmitted.

Y.M. Can you prove that the habit exists?

O.M. You can prove it, if you doubt. If you will take a man to a
clothing-store and watch him try on a dozen pairs of trousers, you will
see.

Y.M. The cow illustration