THE EVOLUTION OF. THE MIND. 26% 
ganism is the test of its adequacy. The continued ex- 
istence of a series of organisms is the ultimate proof of 
the truth of the senses. 
With the lower animals we have automatic obedience 
to the demand of external conditions. The greater the 
stress of the environment the more per- 
fect the automatism, for impulses to safe 
action must always be adequate for the 
duty which in the ancestral past they have had to per- 
form. To automatic mind processes inherited from 
generation to generation the name instinct has been 
given. Whether instinct is in any degree inherited 
habit or whether it is the product simply of natural 
selection acting upon the varying methods of automatic 
response, destroying those whose responses are inade- 
quate, need not concern us now. 
The homing instinct of the fur seal, concluding its 
long swim of three thousand miles by a return on a little 
island hidden in the arctic fogs, to the 
very spot from which it was driven by 
the ice six months before, excites our as- 
tonishment. But this power is not an illustration of 
animal intelligence. The homing instinct with the fur 
seal is a simple necessity of life. Without it the indi- 
vidual would be lost to its species. Only those which 
have the instinct in perfection can return. Only those 
who return can leave descendants. As to the others the 
rough sea tells no tales. We know that not all of the 
fur seals who set forth come back. To those who do 
return the homing instinct has proved adequate. And 
this it must always be so long as the race exists, 
for general inadequacy would mean extinction of the 
species. 
The intellect, as distinguished from lower mental 
operations, is the choice among responses to external 
Nature of 
instinct, 
Instinct of the 
fur seal. 
