38 Chapter III. 



as it is most essentially connected with, and dependent 

 on the specific condition of the nervous system, of the 

 organs of sense perception, and of the exterior instru- 

 ments and vegetative organs of the animal body. Its 

 somatic nature, above all, will be more and more eluci- 

 dated by the progress of modern biology, physiology 

 and anatomy, although the exact nature of instinct will 

 forever remain an enigma. The progress of science 

 will, at any rate, make the invention of "animal intelli- 

 gence" appear more and more as a Deus ex machina 

 which can never be brought to fit into the essential ele- 

 ments of psychic animal faculties. Scholastic phil- 

 osophy is, without doubt, correct when it reduces the 

 whole life of the animal to a life of sensitive instinct. 



It is a known fact that all scholastic schools 

 answered the question : Are animals guided by their 

 natural instinct (Utrum bruta solo instinctu naturali 

 agantur?) in the affirmative without reserve. 1 This 

 answer can only be understood in the supposition that' 

 as often as the term "instinct" was used in contradistinc- 

 tion to intelligence, it was not taken merely as a con- 

 stituent part of the sensitive power of cognition and 

 appetite, but as the adaptive, natural disposition of ani- 

 mal sensation, which constitutes the vital principle that 

 governs the spontaneous actions of the animal. 2 Oth- 

 erwise the answer could not have been simply affirm- 

 ative, without essential restrictions; for apart from and 

 beyond inherited, instinctive knowledge scholastic 



x ) See also J. J. Urraburru, S. J., "Instit. Philos., Psychol." P. 

 1 (1894), p. 843 seq. 



2 ) Tn Scholastic terms "the specific principle of animal purposive- 

 ness" (apprehensio et expansio specitica). 



