182 UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO STUDIES 



and in somnambulism. Action makes consciousness unnecessary. 

 But if the action is checked or thwarted, consciousness awakens. 

 "Consciousness is the light that plays around the zone of possible 

 actions, or potential activity which surrounds the action really per- 

 formed by the living being" .... "where the action is the only 

 action possible, consciousness is reduced to nothing." "The con- 

 sciousness of a living being may be denned as an arithmetical differ- 

 ence between potential and real activity. It measures the difference 

 between representation and action." 



Instinct then points to unconsciousness, and intelligence to con- 

 sciousness. Compare the manner in which we regard the vasomotor 

 system in pumping blood, and the hands in playing the violin. Deficit 

 is the normal state of intelligence; laboring under difficulties is its 

 essence. 



Some of the animals perform acts so marvelous that if they were 

 based on learning they would imply the most profound and extensive 

 studies. Everything happens as if under the guidance of skilled 

 entomologists and surgeons. Those who would praise intellect at the 

 expense of instinct must first explain the amazing mechanism which 

 Nature actually presents in the instinct stage. 



Whatever is innate knowledge in animals bears on things, while in 

 children it bears on relations. The best example of the latter is the 

 ease with which children take up the meanings of phrases and sen- 

 tences: intelligence has an innate knowledge of forms just as instinct 

 has a similar knowledge of things. Instinct is thus far superior to 

 intelligence in the quality of its content, but it is exceedingly narrow. 

 Intelligence, knowing relations, knows thousands of things where instinct 

 knows only one. "There are things that intelligence alone is able to 

 seek, but which by itself it will never find. These things instinct alone 

 could find; but it will never seek them." Intellect would be inexplicable 

 in itself, but it is to be thought of as a very remarkably wide extension of 

 practical knowledge: it is a way of knowing the world of matter which 

 enables us to act upon it as instinct never could. Spencer thinks he 

 explains intellect when he exhibits it as "an impression left on us 

 by the general characters of matter." But this is reversing things; 



