722 COMPARATIVE AND GENETIC PSYCHOLOGY 



In the third place, the direct analogy is emphasized between 

 animal instincts, on the one hand, and inorganic as well as veget- 

 able processes, on the other. The upward crawling tendency of 

 young caterpillars and the upward migrations of pelagic animals 

 are mere mechanical responses, Loeb insists, "similar to that which 

 forces the stem of the plant ... to bend toward the source of 

 light"; 1 and the changes produced by electric currents in the post- 

 ures of amblystoma are closely analogous to the phenomena ob- 

 served in inorganic bodies under the influence of electric currents. 2 



A careful examination of these three arguments will disclose, how- 

 ever, that no one of them is an entirely decisive proof that instinct- 

 ive activities are unconscious. To begin with the argument last 

 stated: the likeness of instinctive animal reactions to inorganic 

 processes stamps the animal reactions as non-psychic, only on the 

 supposition that the inorganic movements are non-psychic. This 

 assumption is, to be sure, commonly made; and it is made, in 

 particular, by most of those who support the continuity hypothesis. 

 By them, therefore, the logic of this argument from the analogy 

 of animal with inorganic movements may not be challenged. Any 

 one, who argues, "the echinoderm, like the human being, turns 

 toward the light, and is, therefore conscious," cannot object, on 

 formal grounds, to the counter-argument, "the nereid crawls into 

 the lighted tube as inevitably as the needle turns to the pole, and 

 is therefore unconscious." (From metaphysical considerations, on 

 the other hand, this argument might well be assailed.) So far as 

 the second of their empirical arguments is concerned, the mech- 

 anists are certainly right in insisting that actions which are 

 mechanically repeated, even when useless or dangerous, are not 

 purposive. Nevertheless this argument also falls short of its 

 ulterior aims. Acts which are purposeless may well be conscious ; 

 and the caterpillars, worms, and butterflies may have the sense- 

 consciousness of crawling, even without the purpose of self- 

 preservation. So, also, the successful demonstration that animal 

 reactions are direct responses to an external stimulus disproves 

 the selectiveness or discrimination of animal reactions, but does 

 not disprove their consciousness. Bethe's ants, for example, 

 though incapable of finding their way home, by means of visual 

 imagination, may none the less have been conscious of odor, as 

 they followed the food dropped by the way. And, finally, the 

 law of parsimony, the theoretical stronghold of the mechanist, 

 cannot be admitted as a controlling consideration. It is true 

 that, other things being equal, the simplest explanation is to be 



1 Op. tit., p. 181. Cf. Der Heliotropismus der Thiere, pp. 74, 88, 109, 1890. 



2 Ibid., p. 160. Cf. Loeb and Garrey, Zur Theorie des Galvanotropismus, n 

 Pfliiger's Archiv, LXVI, p. 41, 1896. 



