ANIMAL AND RATIONAL INTELLIGENCE 189 



of instinctive action in animal life. There has been 

 care enough to restrict the significance of instinct 

 whenever an approach has been made to exact de 

 finition ; but there has also been unquestioning use of 

 the whole phraseology applicable to rational action, 

 just as if no such definition had been reached. There 

 is general agreement with Darwin s account of the 

 essentials of instinctive action : An action, which we 

 ourselves require experience to enable us to perform, 

 when performed by an animal, more especially by a 

 very young one, without experience, and when per 

 formed by many individuals in the same way, without 

 their knowing for what purpose it is performed, is 

 usually said to be instinctive. l Some of these 

 characteristics may, as Darwin says, be wanting in 

 certain cases, sufficient to allow for variation in in 

 stinctive action, such as certainly occurs. Biologists 

 are, however, agreed that instinctive actions are done 

 without experience, and without knowledge of the 

 purpose for which they are done ; yet so uniformly 

 as to be included within the conditions providing for 

 continuance of the species. What is required of us 

 is, consistency with the admission that the action is 

 done without experience, and without knowledge 

 of the purpose for which it is performed. There 

 is a surrender of such consistency, when instinct is 

 classified with the other mental faculties in animals 

 of the same class, 2 and when it is said that several 

 distinct mental actions are commonly embraced by 

 this term, 3 and that variations in instinct imply 

 variation in the mental qualities of animals of the 



1 Origin of Species, chap. viii. p. 191. 



2 Ibid. p. 191. 



