228 PROCEEDINGS COTTESWOLD CLUB 1906 
water. The application in this latter case is the instinctive 
act of swimming. 
In plants and in some of the lower invertebrate animals 
there is in like manner an hereditary preparation to respond 
adaptively by certain applications of the vital energies 
when the appropriate presentations occur. Thus the stem 
of the seedling grows upward in a direction opposite to 
that of gravitative attraction (negative geotropism). Plants 
in the cottagers’ windows grow towards the light (positive 
heliotropism). There are a number of such “tropisms” 
dependent upon racial preparation; they show adaptive 
applications of organic behaviour, which follow on specific 
presentations of environing circumstances. In what 
respect do these tropisms differ from modes of instinctive 
activity ? The question is difficult to answer. As a pro- 
visional reply it may be said that instinctive behaviour 
affords a basis for intelligent behaviour. The animal may 
profit by the experience gained in the performance of 
instinctive activities. | Thus the chick instinctively pecks 
at small grains, but some of these are nice, some are not. 
The pecking responses are modified in accordance with 
the experience they afford. It would seem that such 
ability to profit by experience is connected with the. 
possession of a nervous system. ‘There is at present no 
evidence that plants are able to profit by experience and to 
modify behaviour in accordance therewith. We may say 
then, provisionally, that tropisms afford examples of appli- 
cation as the outcome of racial preparation; but that 
instincts imply @/so an accompaniment of conscious 
experience and are susceptible of modification in accord- 
ance with the nature of that experience. This opens up 
a psychological as well as a biological aspect of instinct. 
Biologically, instinctive behaviour is due to racial prepara- 
tion, and is prior to any individual experience : psycholo- 
gically, it affords certain data to experience, and thus lays 
