PLAY AND INSTINCT. 35 



instinct. Indeed, he approaches Weismann's standpoint 

 on this question, as I do.* 



Tlie discussion took on a more polemic form in 

 Germany. Materiahsm made the attack. Carl Vogt, 

 in the last chapter of his Pictures from Animal Life, 

 speaks contemptuously of " so-called instinct." Brehm 

 in his great work employs all the eloquence at his com- 

 mand against the '^impossible doctrine of so-called in- 

 stinct in animals." f And Biichner follows him with 

 an exhaustive discussion. All these writers agree in 

 attacking first the theological conception, to which their 

 materialistic point of view is, of course, fundamentally 

 opposed. And they naively assume that any other point 

 of view is out of the question. Thus we find in Biich- 

 ner this remarkable definition: "Men have fallen into 

 strange ignorance and conceit in calling the unknow- 

 able soul-expression of animals instinct, a word derived 

 from the Latin instinguere (to stimulate or incite), and 

 therefore necessarily implying a supernatural stimulator 

 or inciter." % ^^T^en the materialists become acquainted 

 with Darwin^s positive criticism of the old instinct idea, 

 they agree indeed with it, but, passing by with slight no- 

 tice his theory, they were not disturbed in their polemic 

 against the " unfortunate word instinct." Biichner, espe- 

 cially, protests in several of his works sharply and per- 

 sistently against the use of the word. He dwells on its 

 variability of signification and on its mistaken employ- 

 ment, and considers parental teaching and individual ex- 

 perience and reflection the true sources of actions usually 

 called instinctive. He points out after careful study 

 that " the most of what was formerly ascribed to instinct 



* A. R. Wallace, Darwinism, p. 442. 



f Thierleben, second edition, i, p. 20. 



X L. Biichner, Kraft und Stoff, 1883, p. 471. 



