Experimental Study of Associative Processes 37 
impulses to act, is not affected by this modification. Most; 
of this activity is determined by heredity; some of it, by! 
‘previous experience, 
My use of the words instinctive and impulse may cause 
some misunderstanding unless explained here. Let us, 
throughout this book, understand by instinct.any reaction. 
which an animal makes to a situation without experience. 
It thus includes unconscious as well as conscious acts. 
(Any reaction, then, to totally new phenomena, when first 
“experienced, will be called instinctive. Any impulse then 
felt will be called an instinctive impulse. Instincts include 
whatever the nervous system of an animal, as far as inher- 
ited, is capable of.. My use of the word will, I hope, every- 
where make clear what fact I mean. If the reader gets the 
fact meant in mind it does not in the least matter whether 
he would himself call such a fact instinct or not. Any 
one who objects to the word may substitute ‘hocus-pocus’ 
for it wherever it occurs. The definition here made will not 
be used to prove or disprove any theory, but simply as a 
signal for the reader to imagine a certain sort of fact. 
The word impulse is used against the writer’s will, but 
there is no better. Its meaning will probably become clear 
as the reader finds it in actual use, but to avoid misconcep- 
tion at any time I will state now that\ impulse means the’ 
consciousness accompanying a muscular innervation apart 
from that feeling of the act which comes from seeing oneself 
move, from feeling one’s body in a different position, etc. It 
is the direct feeling of the doing as distinguished from the 
idea of the act done gained through eye, etc. For this 
reason I say ‘impulse and act’ instead of simply ‘act.’ 
Above all, it must be borne in mind that by impulse I never 
mean the motive to the act.. In popular speech you may say 
that hun er is the impulse which makes the cat claw. That 
