Consciousness and Instinct. 141 



we have above described as impulse. If we understand 

 then by impulse an organic tendency which may have a 

 conscious accompaniment, we shall have gone as far as 

 seems at present justifiable in going, where instinctive 

 behaviour is concerned. 



It now only remains to say a few words concerning the 

 relation of the acquired automatism of habit to the con- 

 genital automatism of instinct. When we say that some 

 oft-repeated habit is carried out automatically, we mean 

 that it is done without conscious guidance and control. 

 The cerebral cortex with its concomitant consciousness has 

 somehow left the impress of its control, uniformly exercised 

 in certain specific ways, upon the automatic mechanism. 

 How this is effected we do not know. But the fact is a 

 familiar one. Many actions which at first require our fully 

 conscious guidance and control pass, through frequent 

 repetition, into the condition of automatic acts generally 

 accompanied by consciousness as an adjunct, but some- 

 times performed unconsciously. They have become merely 

 organic responses conscious or unconscious. They conform 

 therefore to our definition of automatic acts as those which 

 are performed without the immediate and effective inter- 

 vention of those molecular changes in the cerebral cortex 

 which are accompanied by consciousness. 



Whether in the case of automatic actions of the 

 acquired type the channels of nervous discharge in the 

 brain still run through the cortex, or whether by a process 

 of " short-circuiting " they are restricted to the lower brain- 

 centres, it is impossible at present to say. If we knew 

 with anything approaching certainty what special parts of 

 the cortex are concerned in the essentially controlling 

 process, it might be possible to decide between these two 

 views. Unfortunately we do not. All that can be said, 

 and that with as much confidence as is permissible in such 



