INSTINCT AND B, E A S O N 



protection against injury. It is so admirable that 

 it has become instinctive and instantaneous. 

 Your human reason cannot control it. Yet if you 

 had been asked whether it was possible for you to 

 take action to protect a particular part of your 

 body against a blow which threatened it without 

 bringing your conscious reason into play, you 

 would surely have said No. 



Besides this instinctive habit of blinking in 

 self-defense, everyone must have had experience 

 of other occasions when he acted by unconscious 

 instinct in a way which, had time allowed, his 

 conscious reason would not have sanctioned. How 

 often one does a thing " without thinking " and 

 " on the spur of the moment " and is sorry for it 

 afterwards! This is human reason coming too 

 late into action. Other animals always act with- 

 out thinking, and on the spur of the moment : but <^ 

 they are not sorry for it afterwards. They are'" 

 spared the conscious unhappiness which follows ^ 



wrong actions. 



You see a good instance of the instantaneity 

 which especially distinguishes instinctive from^^ 

 conscious actions in the ordinary conduct of all^f 

 other animals. When you are trying, with a 

 camera which has a visible shutter, to photo- 

 graph a small bird at close quarters you can 

 hardly set the shutter to a speed great enough to 

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