November 25, 1892. J 



SCIENCE. 



305 



intelligent. Touch is the connecting link between sensation and 

 sense. 



Instincts are not activities, but impulses to action. They are 

 due to the sensations being transmitted from their several local 

 seats to the brain, where they present themselves as cravings, 

 desires, appetites, imperatively calling for relief. They prompt to 

 two classes of activities, those which csin be performed by reflex 

 action of the organism, and those which require the adoption of 

 intelligent means for then- satisfaction. Hunger is a type of the 

 latter, the impulse to void the fceces and urine may be taken as a 

 type of the former. Among the most important instincts are the 

 craving for food, the sexual, and the maternal instincts. 



Instinct impels to action, but does not guide to its performance. 

 It appeals to the mind like a squalling infant to its parents. If 

 reflex action will appease it, it is simply a function of the will; 

 if intelligent measures are required, it is the function of the intel- 

 lect to adopt Ihem. T may emphasize here, as bearing on what I 

 shall urge later, that the most important instincts originate in the 

 local action of proper secretions, as the contents of stomach and 

 bladder, the gastric juice, the spermatorrhoeal and lacteal secre- 

 tions, etc., all provoking impulses essential to the preservation 

 of the individual and the species; and no less important to man's 

 intellectual development is the impulse to purposeless activity 

 generated by the waste particles of the tissues on their way to the 

 skin. Every psychological phenomenon has its physical basis, a 

 self evident proposition occasionally lost sight of in the discus- 

 sion of instinct. 



Up to this point it will be generally admitted that the verte- 

 brate animals and higher insects are physiologically and psycho- 

 logically close counterparts of man, the one essential difference 

 being that their perceptions are all limited in range, while man's 

 perceptions embrace the universe. The distinction appears to 

 arise when we approach the subject of the inherited perceptions 

 and working capacities. Many of the lower animals exhibit spe- 

 cial inherited capacity involving clear perceptions such as man 

 rarely exhibits without experience or instruction ; and by almost 

 common consent these special capacities and perceptions, although 

 recognizc-'dly the inheritance of the active intelligence of the spe- 

 cies, are classed as " instincts." The classification which groups 

 these psychological phenomena with impulses generated by secre- 

 tions, is hardly a scientific one. Moreover, the accepted theory 

 assumes that the species of so-called mental automatism exhib- 

 ited, implies less intelligence than was displayed by the early 

 parents of the stock in reaching the attained level of capacity, a 

 view certainly not borne out by any degeneration of the brain; 

 and, last, the advocates of the theory appear entirely to forget 

 how much dexterity of brain and hand man has acquired by 

 heredity. But before entering on this subject I want to make a 

 few remarks on the function and importance of instinct in the 

 economy of life. 



Instinct is the schoolmaster of the intellect. Primitive man, 

 looking around on his environment, would hardly have acquired a 

 single perception of the properties and relations of objects, unless 

 spurred to investigation by his instincts. The instinctive craving 

 for daily food spurred his faculties to the discrimination of 

 all the food substances presented to his senses. He soon acquired 

 familiarity with the characters of every fruit, grain, root, etc., 

 capable of appeasing his hunger, and with the charactei-s and 

 habits of all living creatures around him. In these matters he 

 was fairly rivalled by the lower animals which, prompted by the 

 same instinct of hunger and sense of danger, had their perceptive 

 faculties equally aroused to the character of every thing that 

 could be used as food by them, or that imperilled their lives. 

 Man's hand was the wonderful organ which soon raised him 

 above the intellectual level of the beasts; this, too, would have 

 been useless to him but for the impulse to purposeless activity 

 which besets him from childhood. Subject to this instinct he 

 was, in common with his less-gifted fellow-creatures, under the 

 imperative necessity of exercising every set of muscles and testing 

 every organ in every direction of which it was capable of being 

 used. In these exercises man at once became a being apart, by 

 virtue of his hand. He was impelled to lay hold of every thing 

 he saw, within the compass of his grasp, and whatever he laid 



hold of aroused his perception of its properties. He hurled stones 

 and wielded sticks, revelling in the mere enjoyment of hispowers^ 

 until gradually he acquired that experience of the properties of 

 sticks and stones which suggested their application to the ever- 

 present necessity of providing food. It must not be supposed 

 that he advanced to a single idea without experience. He must 

 have experienced the force of a blow from stick or stone, perhaps; 

 many times, before he conceived the idea of utilizing them as. 

 weapons of offence or defence. Once started on his path of 

 progress, his daily experience constantly added to his stock of 

 perceptions of the properties, and later of the possible uses, to 

 which he could apply the objects he actually handled. There- 

 came a time in the progress of the race when man learned to 

 reason from the known to the unknown, but primitive man waa 

 slow in developing this faculty. As regards every thing which af- 

 fects their personal preservation and food supply, all the evidences 

 point to the conclusion that the perceptions and reasoning powers 

 of other animals are as keen and sure as savage man's; but, wan1> 

 ing the hand and the accompanying wider range of perceptions, 

 their progress was limited to a narrower field. Only one mam- 

 mal, the beaver, has developed a high constructive capacity- 

 Why is this ? 



Remembering what was above said about instincts originating 

 in secretions, it suggests itself that the castor of the beaver may" 

 possibly furnish a special impulse to activity in a prescribed di- 

 rection, but this is not necessary to explain the dam- and castle- 

 building talent of the beaver. The materials used in construction 

 were the waste products of his food which he bad to manipulate 

 under conditions which compelled his attention to such of their 

 properties as he utilizes. By taking them to the mouth of his 

 hole, and floating them off when the water was low, he dammed 

 the stream and raised the water to his bole. In arranging them 

 about his hole to make room temporarily, his perceptions were 

 trained in the direction of castle-building. Given the beavers 

 primitive habits and the suitable environment, the direction of 

 his evolution was as much a matter of constitutional necessity as 

 man's. Fewer faculties were called into requisition in his case,, 

 but these concentrated on special labors attained greater natural 

 facility of application, this added facility becoming in time con- 

 stitutional in the species. 



The wonderful constructive powers of insects have been devel- 

 oped subject to the same law, but for the most part these crea- 

 tures enjoy special facilities for the development of their special 

 capacities. They not only have special instincts due to special 

 secretions, but in these secretions they have the materials of con- 

 struction. The thread of the spider and silkworm, the wax of 

 the bee, the viscid, and other special secretions of a hundred 

 other insects, are all materials which would not excite their atten- 

 tion if they existed apart from themselves, but being under the 

 daily necessity of manipulating them and being under a constitu- 

 tional necessity of manipulating them in certain ways deter- 

 mined by the structure of their brain and manipulating or- 

 gans, the species is forced to a perception of the uses they sub- 

 serve, and are educated by experience to the point of engaging 

 in their manipulation intelligently and with design. And just 

 as the hand has played an important part in the evolution of 

 man's intellectual faculties, so have the special secretions and 

 special organs of insects necessarily produced like results. Their 

 field of performance is limited in direction, but within their pre- 

 scribed limits it is not unreasonable to suppose that they surpass 

 man in the clearness of their perceptions. Within the field of 

 their special activities they do not reason, they know. They 

 reason only in emergencies. 



This brings us to the final point and apparently vast distinction 

 between the achievements of men and insects; and the arguments 

 which apply here will hold good in considering the special apti- 

 tudes of creatures in other classes. The insects have inherited 

 aptitudes for performing tbeir special tasks without experience or 

 instruction, ergo, it is argued, they are automatic, instinctive. 



First with regard to the term instinctive, let us repeat here,- 

 the impulses generated by their special secretions j)rompt in all 

 cases to the voidance of these secretions, but they go no further; 

 the application of the voided material or its mixture into mortar 



