THE SUMMIT OF THE YEARS 



A more specific name for it, and a better one, I 

 think, and for all similar behavior on the part of 

 bird and beast, is the ancient and honorable term 

 "instinct" — a term that the "new psychology" 

 is beginning to shy at or openly to repudiate, but 

 which I do not see how we can get along without. 



Take the case of the woodpecker and his retreat. 

 It may well be the first cavity of the kind the bird 

 has ever made or occupied, but its forebears have 

 made and used such cavities for untold generations, 

 and Downy unconsciously remembers it all. The 

 whole proceeding is. very human, very like what a 

 person might do under certain circumstances — 

 build a hut at the approach of winter, or take pos- 

 session of one already built, enlarging and changing 

 it to suit his notions, and be on the alert for his ene- 

 mies while thus engaged. Yet we do not, because of 

 this, ascribe reason to the woodpecker, or conscious 

 forethought; we call it instinct, inherited memory. 

 In a man these and similar acts are attended with 

 more or less reflection and conscious exercise of 

 will, with, no doubt, much instinctive or inherited 

 impulse. 



Now the new laboratory psychology comes along 

 and says that the key to animal behavior is neither 

 reason nor instinct, but habit or experience. I have 

 in mind especially two recent papers in one of the 

 popular magazines,^ in which the writer urges that 

 ' See McClure's Magazine for June and August, 1909. 

 156 



