334 MENTAL EVOLUTION IN ANIMALS. 



pronounced when I arrived at my analysis of Instinct ; for 

 by identifying Instinct with compound reflex action, we found 

 it to be evident that Mr. Spencer wholly disregards what I 

 take to be the essentially distinguishing feature of Instinct, 

 viz., the presence of Perception as distinguished from Sensa- 

 tion. Thus, lastly, when we now come to the province of 

 Reason, the same divergence recurs. Whether for the special 

 purpose in hand I accept Mr. Spencer's definition of Instinct 

 as compound reflex action, or adhere to my own definition of 

 it as reflex action into which there is imported the element 

 of consciousness, I alike find it impossible to agree with 

 him that Eeason necessarily and only arises out of Instinct. 



For, taking first Mr. Spencer's definition of Instinct, I 

 cannot agree that Eeason necessarily and ouly arises out of 

 compound reflex action, because I see it to be a fact that in 

 the higher organisms we meet with numerous cases of 

 enormously compound reflex actions which present no indi- 

 cations of rationality. And some of these cases, it may be 

 parenthetically observed, can never at any period of their 

 developmental history have been rational, and afterwards 

 have become automatic by frequency of repetition. Such, for 

 example, cannot have been the case with the compound reflex 

 actions which are concerned in parturition, nor with those 

 more obscure reflex actions which now baffle our rationality 

 to comprehend — I mean-the changes set up by an impreg- 

 nated ovum in the walls of the uterus. These are instances 

 of immensely compound reflex actions which must always 

 have occurred with great rarity in the life-history of indi- 

 viduals, and can never at any time have been either the cause 

 or the effect of rationality. 



Again, taking my own definition of Instinct, I cannot 

 agree that Reason necessarily and only arises out of reflex 

 action into which there is imported the element of conscious- 

 ness. For this element is merely the element of Perception, 

 and I do not know of any evidence to justify the conclusion 

 that Perception can only arise out of the growing complexity 

 and infrequency of reflex actions. As I said in my chapter 

 on Perception, " the truth is that, so far as definite knowledge 

 entitles us to say any tiling, the only constant physiological 

 difference between a nervous process accompanied by con- 

 sciousness and a nervous process not so accompanied, is that 

 of time. In very many cases no doubt this difference may 



