208 The Science of Life. 



the activity is instinctive. Of such activities Lloyd 

 Morgan's general description is as follows: " Instincts 

 are congenital, adaptive, and co-ordinated activities of 

 relative complexity, and involving the behaviour of the 

 organism as a whole. They are not characteristic of 

 individuals as such, but are similarly performed by all 

 like members of the same more or less restricted group, 

 under circumstances which are either of frequent 

 recurrence or are vitally essential to the continuance of 

 the race. While they are, broadly speaking, constant 

 in character, they are subject to variation analogous to 

 that found in organic structures. They are often 

 periodic in development and serial in character. They 

 are to be distinguished from habits which owe their 

 definiteness to individual acquisition and the repetition 

 of individual performance. " 



There is general agreement that the term " instinc- 

 tive" and not "intelligent" covers the greater part of 

 the more complex activities of the lower animals, such 

 as ants, bees, and wasps. When Bethe (1898) answers 

 in the negative the question " Is it permissible to 

 ascribe psychical qualities to ants and bees?" and con- 

 cludes from his experiments that these insects are only 

 "reflex-machines", he is simply using new (and not 

 improved?) terms to indicate the old distinction between 

 intelligent and instinctive. 



In many cases it seems necessary to make a compro- 

 mise, and to interpret certain activities as in part 

 intelligent and in part instinctive. Often it appears as 

 if the animal went jogging along instinctively, pursuing 

 a beaten track in obedience to its inherited cerebral 

 mechanism, but suddenly a novel emergency arises, and 

 such intelligence as the animal has seizes hold of the 

 reins of life. 



(3) A third question at present divides comparative 

 psychologists into two camps. Given a case which all 

 will agree to regard as instinctive, e.g. the comb-build- 

 ing of bees, the problem at once arises as to the origin 

 of this instinct. Modern progress has consisted in 

 practically reducing the alternative theories to two. 

 The instinct is either the outcome of the inheritance of 



