1 1 2 Instinct. 



as ready to do their appointed work the instant the 

 animal bursts from the egg, as they are at any sub- 

 sequent period of life, as in the case of the majority 

 of insects and fishes that never know a parent's care. 

 It is sometimes said that hunger is instinctive. 

 A careful consideration of the activities will show 

 this statement to be an abuse of terms. Much con- 

 fusion has arisen by confounding the appetites with 

 the Instincts or from a misapprehension of their 

 relations to each other. The appetites proper, as 

 the appetite for food, arise directly from the func- 

 tional action of some organ. The functional action 

 of the stomach, for instance, producing hunger, 

 calls Instinct into play to procure the proper food. 

 And this may be said of the appetites, that they 

 are the condition for the activity of certain Instincts 

 calling them into play to carry out to completion 

 the work, to which the appetites furnish the first im- 

 pulse ; that is, the continuance of the individual or 

 species. Some of the works that have their origin 

 in an impulse of appetite are so complicated that 

 they give rise to whole series of acts involving a 

 varied and wonderful adaptation of means to ends, 

 as is the case among birds in all their work of rear- 

 ing young referred to in the last lecture. But so 

 long as the same results are reached by the same 

 means by thousands of individuals ivithout experie^ice 

 or instruction, zve have no ground for inferring that 

 there is co7nprehension of means and ends in the actor. 

 In fact the more complex and perfect the work per- 

 formed, /r<?z^/^^^ it is performed withotti instruction 

 or chance for experience, the more certain it is that 



