92 INSTINCT 



tween the means employed and the end attained." ROMANES, 

 Article Instinct, Encyclopedia Britannica. 



Instinct "Purposeful action without consciousness of the pur- 

 pose." VON HARTMANN, The Philosophy of the Unconscious. 



" Instinct is inherited faculty, especially is inherited habit." 

 EIMER, Organic Evolution. 



"Qu'est-ce que Pinstinct? Un mot." G. BOHN. 



"L'Instinct n'est rien." CONDILLAC. 



The above definitions show how differently instinct has 

 been conceived as regards its causation, although as to the 

 kind of behavior to which the term is applied there is in 

 general a broad basis of agreement. Some modern writers 

 would have us discard the term instinct entirely on account 

 of its vagueness and because, as commonly used, it carries 

 with it certain connotations of which they do not approve. 

 "Instinct," says Bonn, "is a legacy of the past, the middle 

 ages, the theologians and the metaphysicians" a word 

 which does not stand for any well-defined reality. Consign 

 it therefore to the dust bin, and describe behavior in other 

 and more scientific terms. Instinct is a word whose con- 

 notation very naturally has varied according to the scientific 

 and philosophical views of the writers who have employed it, 

 but if we were to reject terms generally on this ground our 

 language, even in science, would undergo an embarrassing 

 amount of modification. There are few scientific terms, 

 especially in psychology, which we should be willing to accept 

 to-day with the meanings they had a hundred years ago. 

 Stripped of its older metaphysical implications, which 

 need not annoy us, and used to designate certain types of 

 behavior, the term is a very useful one. It may not be pos- 

 sible to define it with precision. It is also difficult to define 

 a child, a shrub or a tree. We know with a fair degree of 

 clearness what is meant by the statement that nest building 

 in birds and comb making in bees are instinctive. The 



