140 INSTINCT AND REASON. 



exist in the same individual at the same time, and may 

 modify, neutralise, or supplant each other, the same happens 

 with instinct and reason. They co-exist in different degrees 

 in different individuals of the same species, and the one 

 variously modifies, neutralises, or supplants the other. 

 Even in civilised man instinct and reason vary in their inter- 

 relations with the age of the individual. The child is 

 moved more by instinct than reason, while the mature or 

 adult man is actuated more by reason than by impulse. 

 "Bis judgment guides and controls his instincts, while in the 

 infant free vent is given to the latter and their control is a 

 matter of education. We must never forget, however, how 

 little reason frequently guides, or how often rather it fails 

 to guide, children and savages, the idiotic and insane, and 

 even philosophers themselves in their acrimonious disputa- 

 tions. 



It has already been mentioned that by many recent 

 authors instinct is regarded but as a lower and peculiar, 

 obscure and not as yet intelligible or understood, form of 

 intelligence. Whether or not this view be generally adopted, 

 there can be no doubt of the intimate relationship between 

 the two an intimacy of connection that is illustrated by 

 the impossibility of properly differentially defining them ; 

 for it has been shown in the earlier part of this chapter that 

 all the current definitions by so-called mental philosophers 

 including, for instance, those of Paley, Whately, Hamilton, 

 Brougham, Reid are more or less faulty and mischievous 

 or a,bsurd. 



On the whole, it does not seem, to be yet possible conve- 

 niently to discard the term instinct. No doubt it has long 

 been a cloak for our ignorance and prejudice. The con- 

 tinued use of such an ambiguous, indefinable term must be 

 held tantamount to a confession of ignorance. There is no 

 reason, however, for a concealment of ignorance where igno- 

 rance really exists ; so that, even from this point of view, 

 the employment of such a provisional and objectionable term 

 is defensible. At present we have no better term to sub- 

 stitute for it. We cannot yet refer all the mental or pseudo- 

 mental phenomena exhibited either by man or other animals 



