What is Intelligence, and What is Instinct? 27 



question is contained in our former statements. All 

 spontaneous actions are instinctive which are not due to 

 intelligence; consequently all those spontaneous actions 

 of animals which do not manifest a power of formal 

 abstraction must be referred to the sphere of instinct. 



But what is instinct f 1 It is the principle of those 

 actions which we call instinctive. These actions are due 

 to impulse (p. 7) and emanate from the natural incli- 

 nations of the sensitive appetite; they are not reflex 

 phenomena but "spontaneous actions," 2 because they 

 are performed under the influence of the imagination 

 and sensitive emotion; they are not intelligent actions, 

 because they are carried out without consciousness of the 

 purpose of the respective activity. In a being which 

 possesses instinct and intelligence, one and the same 

 exterior action can be partly instinctive and partly intel- 

 ligent, as it is in man. But we are not allowed to admit 

 the cooperation of intelligence in the actions of animals, 

 before we have proved the impossibility of Explaining 

 them by instinct alone-. 



Consequently instinct signifies an impulse of the 

 sensitive appetite to certain objects and acts, the suitable- 

 ness of which transcends the range of knowledge of the 

 agent that performs them. This is the first and proper 

 meaning of the word "instinct." It signifies secondly 

 the peculiarity of sensitive cognition, by which the sensi- 



*) We cannot possibly dwell upon the innumerable old and recent 

 definitions of instinct t 



2 ) This is the reason why sight, hearing, smell, and in general all 

 the activities of sensitive cognition as such and apart from their relation 

 to the exercise of the sensitive appetite, are not "instinctive actions," but 

 only the elements of such activity. This suggestion indicates the solution 

 of a difficulty raised by different critics against our division of spon- 

 taneous activities. 



