VOL. XV. (3) INSTINCT 227 
INSTINCT 
BY 
Professor C. LLOYD-MORGAN, LL.D., F.R.S. 
(Delivered February 20th, 1906) 
(REPORT BY LECTURER) 
As a technical term “instinct” is applied to certain 
modes of behaviour which are characterized by the fact 
that they are not the outcome of individually-won 
experience, but are due to inherited connections which 
have been established within the central nervous system. 
Through some biological means there has beena preparation 
of the organism of such a kind that when a presentation 
from the environment occurs, affording grouped sensory 
stimuli, there follows an application of the vital energies of 
the organism in behaviour appropriate to the circumstances. 
For instinctive activities the preparation has been racial ; 
it is independent of any preparation of the individual 
through its personal experience. The presentation is some 
group of circumstances affecting the sense-organs. The 
application is always, under normal conditions, adaptive, 
and of such a kind as to further the life of the individual or 
the race. For example the chick inherits an organization 
of such a kind as to prepare it to respond adaptively to 
the sight of small objects by pecking at them, and seizing 
them in the bill; the duckling is biologically prepared for 
the special stimulations presented when it is placed in 
