INSTINCT AND REASON. 129 



So much, then, for the current popular and especially 

 theological conceptions of the character or attributes of 

 animal instinct conceptions that have for ages barred the 

 way to all progress in comparative psychology. Modern 

 scientific ideas may possibly constitute or create too great a 

 reaction in a very opposite direction. The favourite concep- 

 tions of instinct formed and expressed by our most eminent 

 naturalists especially of the evolution school of thought 

 are that 



1. All instinct is what is shortly defined as * inherited 

 experience.' The idea implies that experience is acquired 

 and transmitted, being accumulated, intensified, modified in 

 the direction of improvement or otherwise, and organised in 

 the transmission. 



2. Instinct is only a lower or obscure kind or form of 

 intelligence or reason. 



3. Instinct is not a thing, power, faculty, per se, but only 

 a mode of action common to all classes of mental aptitudes. 



There is, no doubt, much that is true in all these modern 

 views, but no one of them is unexceptionable. All are too 

 sweeping in their generalisation. They aim at explaining 

 and including all the phenomena of instinct ; but they fail 

 to do so, because the phenomena in question really belong 

 to three different, though perhaps provisional, categories 

 to wit 



1. Phenomena already explained or that are, or appear 

 to be, capable of explanation by the laws of heredity, 

 habit, acquisition, knowledge, intelligence, or reason. 



2. Phenomena that are unexplained at present, but which 

 will probably, in the course of time, be as satisfactorily ex- 



""N plained as those belonging to the preceding category; and 

 J 3. Phenomena which, at present inexplicable, may long 

 ^/~-or always continue so. 



\ That there are what may, with perfect propriety, be 

 designated acquired artificial, hereditary, inherited, or 

 transmitted instincts there can be no doubt. Such, for 

 instance, are 



1. The fear of man. 



2. The dread of other enemies as of the hawk by the 



