THE ORIGIN OF THE HUMAN SOUL 255 



ful to the individual, or the species, become invested for the 

 animal with a subjective aspect of agreeableness, while ob- 

 jects and actions, which are normally harmful, are invested 

 with a subjective aspect of repulsiveness. The qualities of 

 serviceableness and pleasantness happen, so far as the animal 

 is concerned, to be united in one and the same concrete object 

 or action, but the animal is only aware of the pleasantness, 

 which appeals to its senses, and not of the serviceableness, 

 which does not. Thus, in the example already cited, the dog 

 suffering from tapeworms eats the herb known as Common 

 Wormwood, not because it is aware of the remedial efficacy 

 of the herb, but simply because the odor and flavor of the 

 plant appeal to the animal in its actual morbid condition, 

 ceasing to do so, however, when the latter regains the 

 state of health. How different is the action of the 

 man whose blood is infected with malarial parasites and 

 who takes quinine, not because the bitter taste of 

 the alkaloid appeals to his palate, but solely because he 

 has his future cure explicitly in view! "Finally," says 

 Weld, "the more we learn about instincts the more apparent 

 it becomes that the situations from which they proceed are 

 meaningful, but we need not suppose that the organism is 

 aware of the meaning. The chick in the egg feels (we may 

 only guess as to its nature) a vague discomfort, and the 

 complicated reaction by which it makes its egress from the 

 shell is released." (Encycl. Am., v. 15, p. 169.) 



Recapitulating, then, we may define instinct as a psycho- 

 organic propensity, not acquired by education or experience, 

 but congenital by inheritance and identical in all members 

 of the same zoological species, having as its physical basis 

 the specific nervous organization of the animal and as its 

 psychic basis a teleological coordination of the cognitive, 

 emotional, and motor functions, in virtue of which, given the 

 proper physiological state of the organism and the presence 

 of an appropriate environmental stimulus, an animal, without 

 consciousness of purpose, is impelled to the inception, and 



