422 Animal Life and Intelligence. 



probably centres of an amount of misery and discomfort, 

 from unfulfilled promptings of habit and instinct, which 

 we can hardly realize. 



From habitual activities we may pass by easy steps to 

 those which are instinctive. Both habits and instincts, 

 or, to use a more convenient and satisfactory mode of 

 expression for our present purpose, both habitual and 

 instinctive activities, are based upon innate capacity. But 

 whereas habitual activities always require some learning 

 and practice, and very often some intelligence, on the part 

 of the individual, instinctive activities are performed with- 

 out instruction or training, through the exercise of no 

 intelligent adaptation on the part of the performer, and 

 either at once and without practice (perfect instincts) or 

 by self-suggested trial and practice (incomplete instincts).* 



There is some little difficulty in distinguishing between 

 instinctive activities and reflex actions. Mr. Herbert 

 Spencer defines or describes instinct as compound reflex 

 action. Mr. Komanes defines instinct as reflex action 

 into which there is imported the element of consciousness. 

 But, on the one hand, many instincts involve something 

 more than compound reflex action, since there is an 

 organized sequence of activities ; and, on the other hand, 

 the difficulty (which Mr. Romanes admits) or impossibility 

 (as I contend) of applying the criterion of consciousness 

 renders unsatisfactory the introduction of the mental 

 element as distinctive. I would say, therefore, that (1) 

 reflex actions are those comparatively isolated activities 

 which are of the nature of organic or physiological re- 

 sponses to more or less definite stimuli, and which involve 

 rather the several organs of the organism than the activities 

 of the organism as a whole; and that (2) instinctive 

 activities are those organized trains or sequences of co- 

 ordinated activities which are performed by the individual 



* I use the term " incomplete," and not "imperfect," because Mr. Romanes, 

 in his admirable discussion of the subject, applies the term "imperfect 

 instinct " to cases where the instinct is not perfectly adapted to the end in 

 view (see "Mental Evolution in Animals," p. 167). 



