Habit and Instinct. 



and when it is so employed in this work, the context will, 

 it is hoped, serve to make the meaning clear and to prevent 

 misapprehension. Still, wherever it is so used there will 

 be implied, at least, some element of that individual 

 acquisition and repetition which gives to habit, in the 

 narrower and more restricted sense, its salient characteristic. 



The word " instinct," too, is used in daily conversation 

 and in popular speech with a signification somewhat 

 wider and less restricted than that which attaches to it 

 as a technical term. In the first place, it is commonly 

 employed to distinguish broadly the doings of animals 

 from the ways of man. The former are said to be due to 

 instinct, while the latter are described as rational. But 

 not all the ways, not even all the thoughts, of man are 

 rational. And thus, in the second place, the word 

 "instinct" is used in describing that part of human 

 character and conduct which is not the outcome of a 

 consciously rational process. The man who acts without 

 deliberation is said to do so instinctively ; the girl who 

 shrinks, she knows not why, from the companionship of 

 some of her schoolfellows, is guided, it is said, by her 

 natural instincts. These two uses are closely connected. 

 There is in both a common antithesis to rational ; in both 

 a reference to something deeply ingrained in the nature. 

 And each is serviceable, seldom giving rise to mis- 

 apprehension, since the meaning is sufficiently defined by 

 the context. 



But for use as a technical term, we need further 

 precision. The difference between a word as employed for 

 the daily purposes of familiar conversation or in general 

 literature, and the same word in its usage as a technical 

 term, is this : that in the former case it is in itself freer 

 and more mobile, being, in its usage, moulded to definiteness 

 by the context of the passage in which it occurs ; while in 



