A DISCUSSION ON INSTINCT 457 



experiences is related, to past experiences. And the very vague 

 awareness of results which is associated with those previous 

 feelings of activity gives the chick a vague awareness of the 

 result of its first peck before it has actually performed the action. 

 Such awareness is, of course, rudimentary in the extreme. The 

 chick or duckling cannot then — or indeed ever — be aware of 

 the aims of its instincts, as we are aware of them. But it is 

 important to note what rudimentary consciousness of this kind 

 exists, and to realize that it is the embryonic representative of 

 meaning." 



The other assumption, that of the perfection of instinct from 

 the outset, Myers disposes of by quoting instances of the vari- 

 ability and imperfection of instinctive behavior. He suggests 

 that the difficulty of enumerating human instincts may rest on 

 the fact that our own actions never seem to us determined by 

 instinct; seen on the subjective aspect they appear intelligent. 

 ' ' Instinct regarded from within becomes intelligence ; intelligence 

 regarded from without becomes instinct." 



Lloyd Morgan,^' while admitting that instinctive and intel- 

 ligent factors are everyw'here interwoven in behavior, holds 

 that for psychological analysis they may be distinguished: so 

 far as the form of a response is dependent on heredity it is 

 instinct; so far as it is dependent on previous experience it is 

 intelligent. Instinct includes " all those primary and inherited 

 modes of behavior, including reflex acts, which contribute to 

 what I have termed the primary tissue of experience." While 

 agreeing with Myers that the performance of an instinctive act 

 usually involves some consciousness of meaning derived from 

 previous experience, Morgan points out that this holds only 

 when we have not got to the beginning of experience, which 

 must begin somewhere. For " perfection at the outset " as a 

 criterion of instinct, Morgan would substitute practical service- 

 ability on the occasion of its first performance. All intelligent 

 behavior, he holds, has an instinctive element. "It is that 

 element which cannot be explained by the grouping of the fac- 

 tors of experience, since it is the innate ability so to group them." 



H. Wildon Carr " presents Bergson's view of instinct. There 

 are, he maintains, abundant examples of instinct without intel- 

 ligence, as the behavior of ants; and of intelligence without 

 instinct, as the behavior of an admiral directing a naval engage- 



