WATSON'S "BEHAVIOR" 469 



tive or habitual. The best that we can hope to do is to analyze 

 the act into its elements and then determine which factors 

 are innate and which are acquired. 



It has been my conviction for several years that the term 

 instinct has outlived its usefulness in science. All behavior of 

 organisms can be classed under two heads. It is either the 

 function of an innate mechanism and therefore determined by 

 the hereditary organization (reflexes, 'instincts'), or else it ex- 

 hibits new combinations of elements whose pattern has been 

 individually acquired. Habit is only a terminal phase of this 

 individual modifiability. Both innate and individually variable 

 action are found in some measure in all organisms, and, as 

 stated above, in almost every act of the higher animals; and 

 a more detailed consideration of the relations of these two 

 factors at the beginning of the discussion of instinct might 

 profitably replace some of the discussion of moot questions of 

 general evolutionary theory in Chapter V. 



There is a third topic in Doctor Watson's book about which 

 it may be presumptuous for a mere biologist to express an 

 opinion, though it most assuredfy has a biological aspect. The 

 new school of experimentalists has sought to rescue the study 

 of animal behavior from the slough of anectodage and uncritical 

 anthropomorphism into which it had fallen and to establish 

 it on the secure scientific basis of objective and verifiable obser- 

 vation. In this their labors have already been crowned with 

 a gratifying measure of success, and the, future promises still 

 greater gains. In such a book as this one, the author, accord- 

 ingly, does well to adhere strictly to the program which has 

 been so abundantly justified by results and to limit his discus- 

 sions to what is objectively verifiable, leaving quite out of 

 account, observations and speculations about possible mental 

 processes of men or other animals. This is a sound scientific 

 procedure. 



But when he goes further and says that because the phenomena 

 of consciousness as introspectively experienced are irrelevant to 

 his special program, therefore they are everywhere else irrelevant 

 and negligible, he seems to have thrown out the babe with the 

 bath, and the biologist should be the first to protest. The 

 new psychology may perhaps be able to dispense with con- 

 sciousness, but biology cannot do so. 



