
INSTINCT 113 
is shown by the fact that animals are so exceedingly stupid 
in everything not closely related to their instinctive in- 
terests. A cat pays not the least attention to a multitude 
of things going on around her, but the sight of a canary or 
the noise made by a gnawing mouse puts her on the qut-vive. 
Only a few objects have meaning; the rest do not form a 
part of what might be called her effective environment; 
to her they are non-existent. 
Not only in lower forms, but in the higher members of the 
animal kingdom as well, intelligence may be said to be the 
handmaid of instinct. Animals profit by experience in 
order to live their life along the lines marked out for them 
by their instinctive make-up, and whatever pleasure or 
satisfaction their lives may bring is attained by following 
their instinctive bent. ‘Why,’ asks James, in a significant 
passage, “do the various animals do what seem to us such 
strange things in the presence of such outlandish stimuli? 
Why does the hen, for example, submit herself to the tedium 
of incubating such a fearfully uninteresting set of objects as 
a nestful of eggs, unless she have some prophetic inkling 
of the result? The only answer is ad hominem. We can 
only interpret the instincts of brutes by what we know of 
instincts in ourselves. Why do men always lie down, when 
they can, on soft beds rather than on hard floors? Why 
do they sit around the stove on a cold day? ... Why 
does the maiden interest the youth so that everything about 
her seems more important and significant than anything 
else in the world? Nothing more can be said than that these 
are human ways, and that every creature likes its own ways, 
and takes to following them as a matter of course. Science 
may come and consider these ways and find that most of 
them are useful. But it is not for the sake of their utility 
that they are followed, but because in following them we 
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