A DISCUSSION ON INSTINCT 459 



biological adaptations with psychical processes marked by intel- 

 ligence fundamentally akin in nature to all other intelligence." 

 Stout would distinguish instinctive action from a series of re- 

 flexes by the fact " that in instinct congenital prearrangements 

 of the neuromuscular mechanism for special modes of behavior 

 do not of themselves suffice to explain the animal's conduct. 

 Their biological utility depends from the outset on their opera- 

 tion being sustained, controlled, and guided by intelligent interest 

 in the pursuit of ends." 



(3) Is all intelligent activity also instinctively determined? 

 Myers answers this question in the affirmative, Morgan in the 

 negative. [The reviewer does not so understand Morgan.] Here 

 Stout takes issue with Myers, for, he argues, while all intelligent 

 activity depends finally on innate disposition, the inherited pre- 

 disposition that conditions intelligent behavior is not like that 

 which conditions instinctive behavior. Morgan said that instinc- 

 tive behavior is marked by being " definite enough to be ser- 

 viceable;" Stout thinks this too purely biological a criterion, and 

 would substitute for it, as characteristic of instinct, " a definite- 

 ness such as would require to be explained as the result of learn- 

 ing by experience or conscious contrivance, if it were not directly 

 provided for by inherited constitution of the nervous system, as 

 determined by the course of biological development." The 

 inherited dispositions which subserve intelligent action, on the 

 other hand, are rather "special readiness to become more or 

 less intensely and persistently interested in activities 'and objects 

 of a certain kind, and a special retentiveness for the connected 

 experiences." 



McDougall '^ would go further than Myers in his assertion that 

 even an instinctive movement must be accompanied by some 

 vague anticipation of results; he does not see why some of the 

 instinctive activities of animals, especially nest -building in birds, 

 should not be guided by actual innate representations. We 

 have here an interesting but hardly convincing revival of the 

 doctrine of innate ideas in its crudest form. McDougall argues, 

 against the Bergsonian theory, that precisely in the solitary 

 wasps, whose behavior is taken by Bergson as representative 

 of pure instinct, we have really a mingling of instinct and intel- 

 ligence. The principal part of McDougall' s paper is devoted to 

 a discussion of the difference between his conception of instinct 



