130 HUME V 



instinct of a bird is inexact. The man avoids 

 fire when he has had experience of the pain 

 produced by burning ; but the bird incubates the 

 first time it lays eggs, and therefore before it has 

 had any experience of incubation. For the com- 

 parison to be admissible, it would be necessary 

 that a man should avoid fire the first time he saw 

 it, which is notoriously not the case. 



The term " instinct " is very vague and ill- 

 defined. It is commonly employed to denote any 

 action, or even feeling, which is not dictated by 

 conscious reasoning, whether it is, or is not, the 

 result of previous experience. It is "instinct" 

 which leads a chicken just hatched to pick up a 

 grain of corn ; parental love is said to be " instinct- 

 ive " ; the drowning man who catches at a straw 

 does it " instinctively " ; and the hand that acci- 

 dentally touches something hot is drawn back by 

 "instinct." Thus "instinct" is made to cover 

 everything from a simple reflex movement, in 

 which the organ of consciousness need not be at 

 all implicated, up to a complex combination of acts 

 directed towards a definite end and accompanied 

 by intense consciousness. 



But this loose employment of the term "in- 

 stinct" really accords with the nature of the 

 thing; for it is wholly impossible to draw any 

 line of demarcation between reflex actions and 

 instincts. If a frog, on the flank of which a little 

 drop of acid has been placed, rubs it off with the 



