REFLEXES, INSTINCT, AND REASON 447 



the whole. Then he stuffed the shell itself into his mouth. 

 This act was not instinctive. It was the work of pure reason. 

 Evidently his race was not familiar with the use of eggs and had 

 acquired no instincts regarding them. He would do it better 

 next time. Reason is an inefficient agent at first, a weak tool; 

 but when it is trained it becomes an agent more valuable and 

 more powerful than any instinct. 



The monkey Jocko tried to eat the egg offered him in much 

 the same way that Bob did, but not liking the taste he threw 

 it away. 



The confusion of highly perfected instinct with intellect is 

 very common in popular discussions. Instinct grows weak 

 and less accurate in its automatic obedience as the intellect 

 becomes available in its place. Intellect and instinct as well as 

 all other nervous processes are outgrowths from the simple 

 reflex response to external conditions. But instinct insures a 

 single definite response to the corresponding stimulus. The 

 intellect has a choice of responses. In its lower stages it is 

 vacillating and ineffective; but as its development goes on it 

 becomes alert and adequate to the varied conditions of life. 

 It grows with the need for improvement. It will therefore 

 become impossible for the complexity of life to outgrow the 

 adequacy of man to adapt himself to its conditions. 



Many animals currently believed to be of high intelligence 

 are not so. The fur seal, for example, finds its way back from 

 the long swim of two or three thousand miles through a foggy 

 and stormy sea, and is never too late or too early in arrival. 

 The female fur seal goes two hundred miles to her feeding 

 grounds in summer, leaving the pup on the shore. After a 

 week or two she returns to find him within a few rods of the rocks 

 where she had left him. Both mother and young know each 

 other by call and by odor, and neither is ever mistaken though 

 ten thousand other pups and other mothers occupy the same 

 rookery. But this is not intelligence. It is simply instinct, 

 because it has no element of choice in it. Whatever its an- 

 cestors were forced to do the fur seal does to perfection. Its 

 instincts are perfect as clockwork, and the necessities of migra- 

 tion must keep them so. But if brought into new conditions 

 it is dazed and stupid. It cannot choose when different lines 

 of action are presented. 



The Bering Sea Commission of 1896 made an experiment 



