CHAPTER XXV.

INSTINCT.

Its Definition. Instinct is usually defined as the faculty
of acting in such a way us to produce certain ends, without
foresight of the ends, and without previous education in
the performance. Instincts are the functional correlatives
of structure. (With the presence of a certain organ goes,
one may say, almost always a native aptitude for its use)
(The actions we call instinctive all conform to the gen-
eral reflex type; they are called forth by determinate
sensory stimuli in contact with the animal's body, or at
a distance in his environment.) The cat runs after the
mouse, runs or shows fight before the dog, avoids falling
from walls and trees, shuns fire and water, etc., not
because he has any notion either of life or of death, or of
self, or of preservation. He has probably attained to no
one of these conceptions in such a way as to react definitely
upon it. Ce acts in each case separately, and simply
because he cannot help it; being so framed that when that
particular running thing called a mouse appears in his
field of vision he must pursue; that when that particular
barking and obstreperous thing called a dog appears there
he must retire, if at a distance, and scratch if close by;
that he must withdraw his feet from water and his face
from flame, etc. His nervous system is to a great extent a
preorganized bundle of such reactions-they are as fatal as
sneezing, and as exactly correlated to their special excitants
as it is to its own. Although the naturalist may, for his
own convenience, class these reactions under general heads,
he must not forget(that in the animal it is a particular sen-
sation or perception or image which calls them forth.)

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(At first this view astounds us by the enormous number of special adjustments it supposes animals to possess readymade in anticipation of the outer things among which they are to dwell. Can mutual dependence be so intricate and go so far? Is each thing born fitted to particular other things, and to them exclusively, as locks are fitted to their keys? Undoubtedly this must be believed to be so. Each nook and cranny of creation, down to our very skin and entrails, has its living inhabitants, with organs suited to the place, to devour and digest the food it harbors and to meet the dangers it conceals; and the minuteness of adaptation thus shown in the way of structure knows no bounds. Even so are there no bounds to the minuteness of adaptation in the way of conduct which the several inhabitants display.

The older writings on instinct are ineffectual wastes of words, because their authors never came down to this definite and simple point of view, but smothered everything in vague wonder at the clairvoyant and prophetic power of the animals-so superior to anything in man-and at the beneficence of God in endowing them with such a gift. But God's beneficence endows them, first of all, with a nervous system; and, turning our attention to this, makes instinct immediately appear neither more nor less wonder. ful than all the other facts of life.

Every instinct is an impulse. Whether we shall call such impulses as blushing, sneezing, coughing, smiling, or dodging, or keeping time to music, instincts or not, is a mere matter of terminology. The process is the same throughout. In his delightfully fresh and interesting work, Der Thierische Wille,' Herr G. H. Schneider subdivides impulses (Triebe) into sensation-impulses, perception-impulses, and idea-impulses. To crouch from cold is a sensation-impulse; to turn and follow, if we see people running one way, is a perception-impulse; to cast about for cover, if it begins to blow and rain, is an imaginationimpulse. A single complex instinctive action may involve

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successively the awakening of impulses of all three classes) Thus a hungry lion starts to seek prey by the awakening in him of imagination coupled with desire; he begins to stalk it when, on eye, ear, or nostril, he gets an impression of its presence at a certain distance; he springs upon it, either when the booty takes alarm and flees, or when the distance is sufficiently reduced; he proceeds to tear and devour it the moment he gets a sensation of its contact with his claws and fangs. Seeking, stalking, springing, and devouring are just so many different kinds of muscular contraction, and neither kind is called forth by the stimulus appropriate to the other.

Now, why do the various animals do what seem to us such strange things, in the presence of such outlandish stimuli? (Why does the hen, for example, submit herself to the tedium of incubating such a fearfully uninteresting set of objects as a nestful of eggs, unless she have some sort of a prophetic inkling of the result?) The only answer is ad hominem. We can only interpret the instincts of brutes by what we know of instincts in ourselves. Why do men always lie down, when they can, on soft beds rather than on hard floors? Why do they sit round the stove on a cold day? Why, in a room, do they place themselves, ninety-nine times out of a hundred, with their faces towards its middle rather than to the wall? Why do they prefer saddle of mutton and champagne to hard-tack and ditch-water? Why does the maiden interest the youth so that everything about her seems more important and significant than anything else in the world? Nothing more can be said than that these are human ways, and that every creature likes its own ways, and takes to the following them as a matter of course. Science may come and consider these ways, and find that most of them are useful. But it is not for the sake of their utility that they are followed, but because at the moment of following them we feel that that is the only appropriate and natural thing to do. Not one man in a billion. when taking his dinner,

ever thinks of utility. He eats because the food tastes good and makes him want more. If you ask him why he should want to eat more of what tastes like that, instead of revering you as a philosopher he will probably laugh at you for a fool. The connection between the savory sensation and the act it awakens is for him absolute and selbstverständlich, an a priori synthesis' of the most perfect sort, needing no proof but its own evidence. It takes, in short, what Berkeley calls a mind debauched by learning to carry the process of making the natural seem strange, so far as to ask for the why of any instinctive human act. To the metaphysician alone can such questions occur as: Why do we smile, when pleased, and not scowl? Why are we unable to talk to a crowd as we talk to a single friend? Why does a particular maiden turn our wits so upsidedown? The common man can only say, "Of course we smile, of course our heart palpitates at the sight of the crowd, of course we love the maiden, that beautiful soul clad in that perfect form, so palpably and flagrantly made from all eternity to be loved!"

And so, probably, does each animal feel about the particular things it tends to do in presence of particular objects. They, too, are a priori syntheses. To the lion it is the lioness which is made to be loved; to the bear, the shebear. To the broody hen the notion would probably seem monstrous that there should be a creature in the world to whom a nestful of eggs was not the utterly fascinating and precious and never-to-be-too-much-sat-upon object which it is to her.)

Thus we may be sure that, however mysterious some animals' instincts may appear to us, our instincts will appear no less mysterious to them. (And we may conclude that, to the animal which obeys it, every impulse and every step of every instinct shines with its own sufficient light, and seems at the moment the only eternally right and proper thing to do. It is done for its own sake exclusively. What voluptuous thrill may not shake a fly, when The stimuli tran instind is always was that sung that it seins the

to do. The primal is well and.

she at last discovers the one particular leaf, or carrion, or bit of dung, that out of all the world can stimulate her ovipositor to its discharge? Does not the discharge then seem to her the only fitting thing? And need she care or know anything about the future maggot and its food ?)

6

Instincts are not always blind or invariable. Nothing is commoner than the remark that man differs from lower creatures by the almost total absence of instincts, and the assumption of their work in him by 'reason.' A fruitless discussion might be waged on this point by two theorizers who were careful not to define their terms. We must of course avoid a quarrel about words, and the facts of the case are really tolerably plain. Man has a far greater variety of impulses than any lower animal; and any one of these impulses, taken in itself, is as blind' as the lowest instinct can be; but, owing to man's memory, power of reflection, and power of inference, they come each one to be felt by him, after he has once yielded to them and experienced their results, in connection with a foresight of those results. In this condition an impulse acted out may be said to be acted out, in part at least, for the sake of its results. (It is obvious that every instinctive act, in an animal with memory, must cease to be ‘blind' after being once repeated, and must be accompanied with foresight of its 'end' just so far as that end may have fallen under the animal's cognizance) An insect that lays her eggs in a place where she never sees them hatched must always do so blindly'; but a hen who has already hatched a brood can hardly be assumed to sit with perfect. 'blindness' on her second nest. Some expectation of consequences must in every case like this be aroused; and this expectation, according as it is that of something desired or of something disliked, must necessarily either re-enforce or inhibit the mere impulse.) The hen's idea of the chickens would probably encourage her to sit; a rat's memory, on the other hand, of a former escape from a trap would neutralize his imprlse to take bait from anything an animal has munozy

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