GENETIC STANDPOINT IN THE STUDY OF INSTINCT. 91 



instinctive action is gradually superseded by intelligent action, we are compelled to regard 

 instinct as the actual germ of mind. 



(7) The automatism, into which habit and intelligence may lapse, seems explicable, 

 in a general way, as due more to the preorganization of instinct than to mechanical repeti- 

 tion. The habit that becomes automatic, from this point of view, is not an action on the 

 way to becoming an instinct, but action preceded and rendered possible by instinct. Habits 

 appear as the uses of instinct organization which have been learned by experience. 



(8) The suggestion that intelligence emerges from blind instinct, although nothing new, 

 will appear to some as a complete reductio ad absurdum. But evolution points unmistakably 

 to instinct as nascent mind, and we discover no other source of psychogenetic continuity. 

 As far back as we can go in the history of organisms, in the simplest forms of living proto- 

 plasm, we find the sensory element along with the other fundamental properties, and this 

 element is the central factor in the evolution of instinct, and it remains the central factor 

 in all higher psychic development. It would be strange if, with this factor remaining one 

 and the same throughout, organizing itself in sense-organs of the keenest powers and in the 

 most complex nerve mechanisms known in the animal world it would be strange if, with 

 such continuity on the side of structure, there should be discontinuity in the psychic activi- 

 ties. Such discontinuity would be nothing less than the negation of evolution. 



(9) We are apt to contrast the extremes of instinct and intelligence to emphasize the 

 blindness and inflexibility of the one and the consciousness and freedom of the other. It 

 is like contrasting the extremes of light and dark and forgetting all the transitional degrees 

 of twilight. In so doing we make the hiatus so wide that derivation of one extreme from the 

 other seems about as hopeless as the evolution of something from nothing. That is the last 

 pit of self-confounding philosophy. 



Instinct is blind; so is the highest human wisdom blind. The distinction is one of 

 degree. There is no absolute blindness on the one side and no absolute wisdom on the 

 other. Instinct is a dim sphere of light, but its dimness and outer boundary are certainly 

 variable; intelligence is only the same dimness improved in various degrees. 



When we say instinct is blind we really mean nothing more than it is blind to certain 

 utilities which we can see. But we ourselves are born blind to these utilities, and only 

 discover them after a period of experience and education. The discovery may seem to be 

 instantaneous, but really it is a matter of growth and development, the earlier stages of 

 which consciousness does not reveal. 



Blindness to the utilities of action no more implies unconsciousness in animals than in 

 man. It is the worst form of anthropomorphism to claim that animal automatism is devoid 

 of consciousness, for the claim rests on nothing but the assumption that there are no degrees 

 of consciousness below the human. If human organization is of animal origin, then 

 the presumption would be in favor of the same origin for consciousness and intelligence. 

 Automatism could not exclude every degree of consciousness without excluding every 

 form of organic adaptation. 



(10) The clock-like regularity and inflexibility of instinct, like the once-popular notion 

 of the "fixity" of species, have been greatly exaggerated. They imply nothing more than 

 a low degree of variability under normal conditions. Discrimination and choice can not 

 be wholly excluded in every degree, even in the most rigid uniformity of instinctive action. 

 Close study and experiment with the most machine-like instincts always reveal some degree 

 of adaptability to new conditions. This was made clear by Darwin's studies on instincts, 

 and it has been demonstrated over and over again by later investigators, and by none more 

 thoroughly than by the Peckhams in the case of spiders and wasps. 1 Intelligence implies 

 varying degrees of freedom of choice, but never complete emancipation from automatism. 

 The fundamental identity of instincts and intelligence is shown in their dependence upon the 

 same structural mechanisms and in their responsive adaptability. 



1 Wisconsin Geological and Natural History Survey Bulletin No. 2, 1898. 



