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The Problem of Instinct.' 



''PHERE is probably no subject in the whole range of biology, the 

 J. study of which has been so universally neglected as Instinct. 

 Both scientific and popular writers continually refer to it as if its 

 nature and limitations were matter of common knowledge, and its 

 facts so well established as to be almost above criticism. Yet when 

 we ask how it is known that certain actions of man or animals are due 

 to instinct and not to experience or imitation, we find an almost total 

 absence of accurate observation or experiment, while hardly two 

 writers are agreed as to the exact meaning of the term. It is only 

 within the last quarter of a century that a few biologists have made 

 any careful experiments on the phenomena presented by the actions 

 of the higher animals, under such conditions as entirely to exclude the 

 agency of imitation or of parental guidance ; and although these 

 experiments are as yet quite insufficient in quantity and far too limited 

 in scope, having regard to the wide field covered by the actions and 

 behaviour usually considered to be instinctive, yet the results reached 

 are already very interesting, and are sufficient to show us that we need 

 not despair of a complete solution of the problem, at all events as 

 regards the higher animals. 



One of the first English observers to attack the problem on the 

 experimental method was the late Mr. Douglas Spalding, who in 1873, 

 in Macmillan's Magazine, described a number of experiments on young 

 chicks and ducklings, carefully blinded for the first few hours after 

 birth. His conclusions were, that these young birds not only showed 

 intuitive powers of walking, scratching, and pecking, but also 

 possessed intuitive knowledge— or acted as if they possessed such 

 knowledge — of various kinds. He asserted that they were afraid of 

 bees and of the cry of a hawk, and that they intuitively knew the 

 meaning of a hen's call-note and danger-signal when heard for the 

 first time. These results were opposed to Mr. Spalding's pre- 

 conceived ideas, and were therefore the more readily accepted, and 

 have been frequently quoted as settling this point — the possession of 

 instinctive knowledge as well as the power of co-ordinated movements 

 of various kinds. Now, Professor Lloyd Morgan has repeated all 



1 Habit and Instinct, by C. Lloyd Morgan, F.G.S. Pp. 351. London ; Edward 

 Arnold, 1896. Price i6s. 



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