Habit and Instinct.- 449 



given by Mr. Eomanes,* on the authority of Lonbiere, who 

 says "that in one part of that kingdom, which lies open to 

 great inundations, all the ants made their settlements upon 

 trees ; no ants' nests are to be seen anywhere else." Now, 

 this modification of habits may have been the result of 

 intelligence ; or it may have been forced upon the ants by 

 circumstances. The floods drove them on to the trees ; 

 the instinctive impulse to build a settlement was impera- 

 tive ; hence the settlement had to be formed on the trees, 

 because the ground was flooded. The difficulty of ascer- 

 taining whether intelligence has or has not been a factor 

 is simply part of the inherent difficulty of comparative 

 psychology — a difficulty on which sufficient stress has 

 already been laid in an earlier chapter. 



The great majority of the instinctive activities of animals 

 have arisen through a co-operation of the factors, and it is 

 exceedingly difficult in any individual case to assign to the 

 factors their several values. 



- And here we must once more notice that the separation 

 off of the instinctive activities from the other activities of 

 animals is merely a matter of convenience in classification. 

 In the living organism the activities — automatic actions, 

 reflex actions, incompletely and perfectly established 

 instincts, habits, and intelligent activities — are unclassified 

 and commingled. They are going on at the same time, 

 shading the one into the other, untrammelled by the limits 

 imposed by a scientific method of treatment. 



Once more, too, we must notice that the activities of 

 animals are essentially the outcome and fulfilment of 

 emotional states. When the emotional sensibility is high, 

 the resulting activities are varied and vigorous. As we 

 have before seen, this high state of emotional sensibility is 

 correlated with a highly charged and sensitive condition of 

 the organic explosives elaborated by the plasmogen of the 

 cells. After repose, and at certain periodic times, this 

 state of exalted sensibility is apt to occur. It is exemplified 



* " Mental Evolution in Animals," p. 244. 



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