Conclusion. 193 



instinct, not to spiritual intelligence. By a critical, 

 psychological analysis we were led to define instinct 

 as the appro priat e disposition of the^ sensitive powers 

 Ql_co£ nition and app etite. Hence, any action result- 

 ing therefrom must be called instinctive, whether 

 experience is concerned in it or not. But only those 

 actions can be called intelligent, which presuppose the 

 understanding of the relations existing between the 

 sensitive representations, and which cannot be ex- 

 plained by any other supposition. Intetligence, there- 

 fore, exclusively signifies the power to act zvith deliber- 

 ation and self-consciousness. Only this power can be 

 called a spiritual faculty; the sensitive power of repre- 

 sentation and memory cannot be so called, notwith- 

 standing the efforts of modern animal psychologists. 

 The pretended "spiritual life'' of animals, about which 

 popular psychology continues to make such ado, is 

 based on the confusion between sensitive and spiritual 

 faculties. 



Modern animal psychology splits up the psychic 

 life of animals into two different factors, styled 

 instinct and intelligence, between which an artificial 

 contrast is established. Our explanation of the psychic 

 life of animals is more consistent and more natural. 

 What is erroneously termed animal intelligence, we 

 have traced to the same source as the instinctive 

 actions strictly so called, namely, to the suitable 

 hereditary disposition of the sensitive cognition and 

 appetite, which we call ''instinct;'' for, this dispo- 

 sition has a twofold aspect, one automatic, the other 

 plastic. It is automatic, inasmuch as it is determined 



by heredity, and therefore induces the animal to per- 

 13 



