TRAINING FOR CHARACTER. 759 



ward, they are not produced by mental representations, nor are 

 they in any degree at first dependent on the will. By its inevi- 

 table and mechanical character, the reflex is the contrary of the 

 voluntary act. Yet we may say that it also is after its way a kind 

 of matter for the will. One of the first exercises imposed by edu- 

 cation, one of its most laborious apprenticeships, is to control the 

 reflexes and prevent their being produced. Except for the little 

 that the will may gain upon them, or rather upon the conditions 

 under which they are produced, the reflexes remain substantially 

 the same through life, with the difference, which Preyer seems to 

 have well established, that they are slower in the new-born child 

 than they afterward become. 



The instinctive motions resemble the reflexes ; they have to a 

 certain point their mechanical character, and are produced only 

 as in consequence of certain determined impressions. Thus, the 

 young chick does not perform the motion of scratching on the 

 carpet, but begins it at once on the gravel walk, as if the feeling 

 of grains of sand was necessary and enough to set the mechanism 

 in motion. But there is a great difference between instinct and 

 the reflex ; it is not only that instinct is more complicated and 

 its complex motion is composed of co-ordinated movements; 

 but it is connected with a mental disposition, and is dependent 

 on a psychical representation and tendency, or an image and a 

 feeling. 



Some philosophers, reserving the name of instinct for the re- 

 markable industries of some species of animals, like bees and the 

 beaver, deny that man has instincts. But how can we dispute 

 that true and indestructible instincts preside over the functions 

 by which individual life and the life of the species are preserved ? 

 The truth is that, while instinct is all with certain animals, with 

 others, more perfectible and higher in the scale by that fact, a very 

 large part is left to the intelligent activity that can adapt itself 

 to circumstances. This is at the maximum in man ; and in the 

 adult and cultivated man of the higher races the part of mechan- 

 ism is reduced very nearly to nothing. But in the child instinct 

 exercises all its rights, till education deranges and modifies it. 

 The instinctive character that is, partly psychical and not purely 

 reflexive of the movements composing the action of sucking, ap- 

 pears by the fact that the hungry child will suck at his finger as 

 well as at the breast, while, if he is not hungry, he will refuse even 

 the breast. It is also by instinct that he laughs when we excite 

 him by playing with him, or even by tickling him, for, if he is in 

 a bad humor or a stranger tries the experiment, he may cry in- 

 stead of laugh. The instinctive reaction depends essentially on 

 the psychic condition at the moment. Nevertheless, this does not 

 prevent instinct being a hereditary mechanism, over which the 



