i895- SOME DEFINITIONS OF INSTINCT. 323 



who regard instinct as due to lapsed intelligence ; habits formed 

 under intelligent guidance being inherited in the form of instincts. 

 Professor Wundt seems to go yet further when he says 1 ^ : "In- 

 stinctive action is impulsive, that is voluntary action ; and, however 

 far back we may go, we shall never find anything to derive it from 

 except similar, if simpler, acts of will. The development of any sort 

 of animal instinct, that is to say, is altogether impossible unless there 

 exists from the first that inter-action of external stimulus with 

 affective and voluntary response which constitutes the real nature of 

 instinct at all stages of organic evolution." Thus, while Mr. Herbert 

 Spencer regards instinct as primarily not yet voluntary ; and while 

 many writers regard it as no longer voluntary ; Professor Wundt 

 asserts that it is at no time involuntary. 



4. Relation of Instinct to Habit. — The word "habit," like so 

 many others in this connection, is used in different senses. Many 

 writers describe all the activities of animals as their habits. In this 

 sense we speak of habit as correlated with structure. But the term 

 is generally used in psychology in a more restricted sense, and is 

 applied to those activities which have become stereotyped under the 

 guidance of individual control. A habit is, in this acceptation of the 

 term, an acquired activity, the constancy of which is due to frequent 

 repetition by the individual, in adaptation to special circumstances ; 

 and a distinction is drawn between such habits, as individually 

 acquired, and instincts as connate. 20 Those who accept the 

 Lamarckian hypothesis of the origin of instincts through " lapsed 

 intelligence " regard them as the connate effects of the inheritance of 

 acquired habit. Darwin 21 and Romanes 22 believed that instincts were 

 in part due to this mode of origin. Professor Wundt, however, gives 

 to the term a wider meaning, and so defines instinct as to include 

 acquired habit. " Movements," he says, 2 ^ " which originally followed 

 upon simple or compound voluntary acts, but which have become 

 wholly or partly mechanised in the course of individual life, or of 

 generic evolution, we term instinctive actions." In accordance with 

 this definition, instincts fall into two groups. Those, " which, so far 

 as we can tell, have been developed during the life of the individual, 

 and in the absence of definite individual influences might have 

 remained wholly undeveloped, may be called acquired instincts." 24 

 They have become instinctive through repetition. " To be distin- 

 guished from these acquired human instincts are others, which are 

 connate." 2 * " The laws of practice suffice for the explanation of the 

 acquired instincts. The occurrence of connate instincts renders a 



18 " Lectures on Human and Animal Psychology," p. 409. 



20 See, for example, Professor Sully, " The Human Mind," vol. ii., p. 184. 



21 " Origin of Species," p. 206; *' Descent of Man," vol. i., p. 102, quoted in 

 " Mental Evolution in Animals," p. 264. 



22 " Mental Evolution in Animals," p. 200. 



23 " Lectures on Human and Animal Psychology," p. 388. 

 " Op. at., p. 397. 25 op. cit., p. 399. 



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