64 INSTINCT AND REASON. 



HOW with blind regularity quite apart from auy 

 distinct individual consciousness of the end in- 

 tended or the means employed. It may be con- 

 sidered perhaps as a kind of organic, unconscious 

 reason, more rapid and certain, but less discrimi- 

 native and plastic than true individual intelligence, 

 which is always based on conscious experience 

 and on the deliberate adaptation of means to end. 

 Instinct always acts immediately, but it also often 

 acts wrong; reason usually hesitates and deliber- 

 ates, but it leads oftener in the end to the best re- 

 sult. In proportion as any creature rises higher 

 in the scale of life, it will be guided less and less 

 by inherited faculties and more and more by indi- 

 vidual experiences — it will become decreasingly 

 instinctive and increasingly rational — it will sub- 

 ordinate the lower to the higher faculty. That is 

 why in man the instincts are comparatively broken 

 and enfeebled, while the reason is comparatively 

 advanced and supreme. 



