210 ANIMAL BEHAVIOUR 



deliver them, we seem to be in a world very different from 

 that of intelligence. 



While the frequent limitations of instinctive behaviour 

 seem to us to point to a differentia between it and intelligent 

 behaviour, we find further evidence in considering its achieve- 

 ments in preparing for the unforeseen and remote — for off- 

 spring which will never be seen, for the evasion of a winter 

 which will never be experienced. There is an adjustment 

 of means to ends which certainly does not rest on a basis 

 of individual experience. It is possible to say that this 

 organisation for the attainment of remote and uniaiown ends 

 is the inherited result of an originally intelligent prevision, 

 but there are great difficulties in face of this theory. There 

 is certainly inherited organisation, but there is no evidence 

 that the instinctive behaviour ever passed through an intelli- 

 gent phase. In simple cases, we can imagine a sort of 

 intelligent argument from analogy : thus the woodpecker-like 

 bird, Colaptes mexicanus, feeds on insects while it can, but 

 stores acorns against the day when no insects will be availa- 

 ble. But no analogy can suggest making elaborate provision 

 for offspring that are never seen. 



If we rule out the theory that instinctive behaviour has 

 no psychical side, for that is an outrageously false simplicity, 

 we may say that there is a considerable amount of common 

 ground between the various theories. There are plainly two 

 aspects of instinctive behaviour — objective and subjective. 

 There is the hereditary organisation of the nervous system 

 which has been so prepared or evolved that the specific be- 

 haviour comes automatically when the organism is appropri- 

 ately stimulated. But there is also the associated instinctive 

 experience, some degrees of awareness of the situation, some 

 memory of analogous past experiences, some more or less dim 



