142 Habit and Instinct. 



a difficult matter, is that whatever parts of the cortex (or 

 other region of the hrain) were concerned in effective 

 guidance and control are, in the automatism begotten 

 of habit, so concerned no longer. 



As in the case of the congenital automatism of instinct, 

 so, too, in the case of the acquired automatism of habit, 

 the stimulus or group of stimuli produces a state of 

 instability, the restoration of stability being effected by the 

 performance of the habitual activity. If we apply, as above 

 suggested, the word "impulse" to the tendency of the 

 organism to pass on the application of a specific stimulus 

 from the relative instability of a need or want to the 

 relative stability of satisfaction, we have in the case of 

 acquired automatism an habitual impulse answering to the 

 instinctive impulse. When such a tendency is in any way 

 checked or thwarted, the preliminary state of instability 

 would seem to be thereby increased or emphasized, and 

 the impulsive tendency is pari passu augmented. A very 

 acute thinker and able writer — Mr. Henry Eutgers 

 Marshall — goes so far as to say that " the word ' impulse ' 

 is in general use to indicate those phases of consciousness 

 which are produced by the inhibition of instinctive 

 activities that have been stimulated by the presence of the 

 objective condition that usually calls them out, but which 

 for one reason or another are not at once realized." * In 

 this I think Mr. Marshall goes too far. The impulsive 

 tendency is indeed emphasized and augmented ; but to say 

 that it is produced by the inhibition appears to be an over- 

 statement of the case. 



In conclusion one may picture the organism starting 

 with a certain amount of congenital automatism of the 

 more or less definitely instinctive type, and passing on to 

 reach a certain amount of the acquired automatism of 



* Nature, vol. lii. p. 130. 



