Note 6 — X. On the Significance of the Geographical Distribution of the Practice of Mummification.—A Study of the Migrations of Peoples and the Spread of certain Customs and Beliefs.

For if any sense whatever is to be attached to this phrase it implies that man is endowed with instincts of a much more complex and highly specialised kind than any insect or bird—instincts moreover which impel a group of men to perform at the same epoch a very large series of peculiarly complex, meaningless and fantastic acts that have no possible relationship to the “struggle for existence,” which is supposed to be responsible for the fashioning of instincts.

But William McDougall tells us that the distinctive feature of human instincts is that they are of “the most highly general type.” “They merely provide a basis for vaguely directed activities in response to vaguely discriminated impressions from large classes of objects.” (“Psychology, the Study of Behaviour,” p. 171.) There is nothing vague about the extraordinary repertoire of the “heliolithic” cult!