 Notice that Wallace understood instincts to involve knowledge “of a very definite kind” that arises without teaching or experience. By contrast, he allowed that animals inherit certain general (i.e. non-specific) cognitive capacities, such as “lower reason” and learning by imitation, but these were not classified as instincts. Instead, Wallace described such general capacities as emanating from the “organization of the nervous system” (Gross 2010). He thought that these mechanisms provide a more plausible explanation for the acquisition of most animal and human behavior than Darwin’s appeal to instinct.