MENTAL FACULTIES 



somewhat later, after some practice and experience, such be- 

 haviour seemed to me perfectly natural. 



Our soldiers did not even consider it worth while to rise 

 from their beds when a shell came through a loophole into the 

 narrow corridor where they slept, and there burst with a 

 frightful crash, after the bombardment of our little fortifica- 

 tion already mentioned had been continued for several nights. 

 But when, after the surrender of Strassburg, it altogether 

 ceased, we slept badly at first on account of the unaccustomed 

 silence, like a miller whose mill has stopped. 



These examples show in the clearest way that re- 

 flex and automatic action cannot be sharply separated ; 

 how easily the latter is acquired by us during life ; and 

 further, that it passes directly into instinct, as my view 

 supposes. 



But since it is impossible, as will be shown more particu- 

 larly, to establish a point in the animal scale beyond which 

 a brain can be demonstrated, for voluntary action certainly 

 takes place even where no defined brain is present, and since 

 in lower animals it is very difficult to distinguish voluntary 

 from involuntary action, and nervous action from the results 

 of ordinary physico-chemical reaction, therefore it is difficult 

 to say whether this or that action in the lower animals is to 

 be referred to such reaction, or to reflex action, or to habit, or 

 to instinct. 



Thus, according to the preceding considerations, automatic 

 action may be described as habitual voluntary action, instinct 

 as inherited habitual voluntary action, or the capacity for 

 such action. 



According to the preceding, instinct cannot be distinguished 

 from some kinds of reflex action, from the reflex action which 

 was originally voluntary, by its mode of origin ; and the 

 reflex action originally voluntary, again, cannot be definitely 

 separated from pure reflex action. Thus there is some temp- 



