74 MIND IN EVOLUTION CHAP. 



The sight of appropriate food stimulates the chick to 

 peck, just as the contact of the food with the interior of 

 the bill stimulates the swallowing reflexes. And just as 

 the sight of food stimulates the chick to peck, so the 

 sight of the chick stimulates the hen to cluck, or to scratch 

 for food, or to protect it against danger, and so forth. 



But the last instance shows us that if we actually 

 identify instinctive with reflex action, we shall be running 

 into paradox. In the maternal care exercised by the hen 

 many reflexes are involved as constituent elements. No 

 doubt a certain optical stimulus may by a purely reflex 

 process make the hen utter the " danger cluck " ; the 

 sound of which in the same way induces the chicks to 

 hide. As they run to her she spreads out her wings to 

 receive them and so forth. Each particular act may be 

 described without obvious violence as reflex, but the 

 whole is an adaptive combination of reflexes in which the 

 combination is as important as each separate act. That is 

 to say it is of sensori-motor type. Nor is this all. The 

 sensori-motor act is only one incident in what may be a 

 long and complex series all of which tend to one result, 

 the production and safe rearing of the chicks. Through- 

 out this series there appears to be in the hen at least 

 some permanent state corresponding to what we call 

 maternal feeling, or theparental instinct, which dominates her 

 actions throughout, and without which the various reflexes 

 would not be discharged by their appropriate stimuli nor 

 the perceived situations have their effect in combining 

 reflexes suitably. If she had no chickens to think of, 

 the hen would pick up the food which she finds, and 

 would seek her own safety when frightened. 



To this it may be replied that the adaptive combination 

 of the reflexes is itself a part of the mechanism provided 

 by heredity for the maintenance of the species. Those 

 who hold with Mr. Herbert Spencer that instinct is merely 

 compound reflex action, will point out that each action 

 that we have mentioned naturally calls for the next until 

 the chain is complete. This concatenation is no doubt 

 adaptive, but it is also mechanical, and to impute to the 

 hen maternal feeling unless we can show that this feeling 



