vi INSTINCT 103 



as reflex states. The sudden anger which one feels on 

 being thwarted arises without reflection or any complexity 

 of adjustment. It is a response which though conscious 

 seems to come about mechanically. In popular language 

 we use the term instinctive to describe it, but 1 am 

 not sure that we do not pay it too much honour. I 

 doubt if it reaches the instinctive level. Nor are 

 emotional impulses the only acts of this class. On the 

 contrary, all sensation is the conscious accompaniment 

 of a response to stimulus by the nerve structure. I see, 

 not merely because the image of an object is cast upon 

 my retina, but because optic nerve and brain react to that 

 stimulus in a particular way. Experience, of course, 

 rapidly acquires a share in modelling sensation, but 

 there seems no reason to deny that " crude sensations/' 

 representing the reaction of the inherited structure as 

 such to the appropriate excitement, contribute at 

 least one element to our complex consciousness. 



We find, then, a certain raw material of our conscious 

 life, which arises in direct and uncomplicated response, 

 determined by the hereditary structure, to outward 

 objects, or from physical changes of the internal structure. 

 Furthermore, heredity lays the foundation of our entire 

 mental life. We inherit not only capacities for sensation 

 and emotion, but also capacities for distinguishing, analys- 

 ing and combining them. We have opposed intelligence 

 as the work of the individual to instinct as the product of 

 heredity, but intelligence as a capacity is also hereditary. 

 The propensity to inquire, and the methods of analysing 

 and comparing used in inquiry, all have a foundation in 

 the hereditary structure. It is what we do with these 

 materials and these tools that is our own. It is the pro- 

 duct that is the work of the individual, not the means by 

 which he makes it. He may, indeed, in the course of the 

 operation, deal with the means themselves, polishing the 

 instruments with which nature furnished him, or even 

 combining them to build up some more subtle organ. 

 But throughout he is working upon and with the here- 

 ditary endowment. We cannot, therefore, in classifying 

 the works of the mind place heredity and acquirement in 



