INSTINCT. 65 



the animal he meant to talk about, and provided he did not use 

 the name to argue, for instance, that we might, having found 

 fission in Hylobates McKinleyensis, expect it in the forms 

 ordinarily called "Hylobates." Names are not facts, and quar- 

 rels about them are generally quarrels about rhetorical expe- 

 diency. So if any one chooses to call instinctive only such 

 unlearned acts as have consciousness accompanying them, 

 leaving other such acts the name "reflex action " and lumping 

 in still other such acts under the words "processes of respira- 

 tion, digestion," etc., I, personally, have no theoretical objection. 

 It seems to me practically unwise to separate the discussion of 

 unlearned activities with consciousness from that of unlearned 

 activities without consciousness, so long as you are thinking 

 about the external form of the act ; and I have even chosen to 

 so define the word that even digestion and respiration could be 

 studied under the name. There is really no need for any name 

 and no cause for worry if we cannot invent any one definition 

 which will consistently apply to all the facts we treat. For 

 what is important is concrete information about particular facts. 

 My use of a name or definition is to point to certain actual 

 facts, and I trust that I have made clear by my illustrations to 

 what sort of facts my statements refer. To one who should 

 say, " By your definition the knee-jerk or the formation of 

 saliva is an instinct, for they are 'unlearned reactions,' — may 

 even be considered reactions to a 'complex external situation,' 

 — yet your statements about the formation of habits and inhi- 

 bition are not true of them," I should reply, "I plead guilty, 

 though I did describe further my facts as those which ' physi- 

 ology generally leaves out,' but you are a more stupid reader 

 than I expected to address." 



The fact is that unlearned activities range from direct physi- 

 cal and chemical activities of single cells to most complicated 

 activities involving the nervous system ; that the series seems 

 to be continuous ; that if you try to separate off one lot 

 "instincts," another lot "reflexes," another lot "non-nervous 

 reactions," you find your classes running into each other. It 

 is because of my confidence in this continuity of nature that I 

 used my definition only to point to what I was talking about — 



