CHAPTER XI. 



INTER-RELATIONS OF INSTINCT AND REASON. 



THE terms instinct, instincts, and instinctive are used in so 

 many different senses, their definitions are so various, con- 

 flicting, confusing, ridiculous, or unsatisfactory, or it is so 

 difficult to define them at all, that it would be a great ad- 

 vantage could they be dispensed with altogether, and other 

 terms substituted possessing at least less ambiguity. 



In the first place, the term instinct is too generally used 

 as a synonym for animal intelligence in contrast with human 

 reason, judgment, or intellect. Operations that in man are 

 ascribed to reason are in other animals, on no proper grounds, 

 assigned to instinct. The most diverse opinions exist, how- 

 ever, as to the possibility or propriety of separating animal 

 intelligence from that of man, call the two by what names 

 we may. Some authors, as will be seen in the sequel, hold 

 that there is an absolute identity between instinct and 

 reason as to kind, though not as to degree ; others think 

 that they are separated by a perhaps puzzling borderland ; 

 others believe that they overlap or pass into each other, or 

 that they may co-exist or be associated in different degrees, 

 or that the one may, and does, supersede the other ; while 

 others, lastly, consider that they are so strongly contrasted 

 by their very different attributes or characteristics as to be 

 diametrically opposed the one to the other. In the next 

 place, many of what are called instincts in other animals are 

 what in man are described as feelings, emotions, propensi- 

 ties, passions, appetites, desires, impulses, and habits ; but 

 some of these propensities in man belong to the lowest class 

 of animal instincts for instance*, his whining or barking 



