Organic Connection Between Physical and Psychical 



himself, no matter how voluminous, and perhaps excellent 

 in quality, their experimental researches may be. 



For instance, such a view as that of Bohn's, according to 

 which the word instinct ought to be eliminated from the 

 terminology of science "as a legacy of the past, the middle 

 ages, the theologians and the metaphysicians," is so obvi- 

 ously unjustifiable to any well-informed zoologist as to 

 make him suspicious of such a writer all along the line, 

 especially wherever his judgment and scientific poise are im- 

 plicated. 



This question of the reality of instincts I use to illus- 

 trate the peril to the general student of the unpoised spe- 

 cialist, because it is germane to the present discussion. In 

 general zoology the type of animal behavior to which the 

 term instinctive is applied is not less conspicuous and real, 

 to say the least, than is the type described as tropistic. 

 For an experimentalist to come out of his laboratory and 

 tell a broadly experienced entomologist or ornithologist, for 

 example, that the familiar achievements of young insects 

 of many species, and of numerous young birds should not 

 be called instinctive because (as the experimenter asserts) 

 they are reducible to the tropistic or perchance the simple 

 reflex type of reaction, may justly be characterized as sci- 

 entific impertinence. It is as though an embryologist, hav- 

 ing discovered that a bird's wing is the genetic counterpart 

 of a salamander's forelimb, should instruct the ornitholo- 

 gist that it is wrong for him to call the bird's wing a wing, 

 because the member may be reduced to a lower type of limb. 

 Unquestionably the experimental specialist often pro- 

 duces results which necessitate changes in the general zo- 

 ologist's conceptions and nomenclature. But it is not his 

 province to take into his own hands the revision of the 

 fundamental terms of zoology. Any one moderately in- 

 structed in the history of zoology knows that "instinct'' is 

 a hardly less well-grounded zoological term than "birth" or 



