Notes on Foregoing Chapter 143 



We find on page 114 that " all instinctive actions give 

 us an impression of absolute security and infallibility " ; 

 that " the will is never weak or hesitating, as it is when 

 inferences are being drawn consciously." " We never," 

 Von Hartmann continues, " find instinct making mistakes." 

 Passing over the fact that instinct is again personified, the 

 statement is still incorrect. Instinctive actions are cer- 

 tainly, as a general rule, performed with less uncertainty 

 than deliberative ones ; this is explicable by the fact that 

 they have been more often practised, and thus reduced 

 more completely to a matter of routine ; but nothing is 

 more certain than that animals acting under the guidance 

 of inherited experience or instinct frequently make mis- 

 takes which with further practice they correct. Von 

 Hartmann has abundantly admitted that the manner of 

 an instinctive action is often varied in correspondence 

 with variation in external circumstances. It is impossible 

 to see how this does not involve both possibility of error 

 and the connection of instinct with deliberation at one 

 and the same time. The fact is simply this — when an 

 animal finds itself in a like position with that in which 

 it has already often done a certain thing in the persons of 

 its forefathers, it will do this thing well and easily : when 

 it finds the position somewhat, but not unrecognisably, 

 altered through change either in its own person or in the 

 circumstances exterior to it, it will vary its action with 

 greater or less ease according to the nature of the change 

 in the position : when the position is gravely altered the 

 animal either bungles or is completely thwarted. 



Not only does Von Hartmann suppose that instinct 

 may, and does, involve knowledge antecedent to, and 

 independent of, experience — an idea as contrary to the 

 tendency of modern thought as that of spontaneous genera- 

 tion, with which indeed it is identical though presented 

 in_another shape — but he implies by his frequent use of 



