320 INSTINCT. [Chap. VIIL 



what purpose it. is performed, is usually said to be in- 

 stinctive. But I could show that none of these charac- 

 ters are universal. A little dose of judgment or reason, 

 as Pierre Huber expresses it, often comes into play, 

 even with animals low in the scale of nature. 



Frederick Cuvier and several of the older meta- 

 physicians have compared instinct with habit. This 

 comparison gives, I think, an accurate notion of the 

 frame of mind under which an instinctive action is 

 performed, but not necessarily of its origin. How un- 

 consciously many habitual actions are performed, in- 

 deed not rarely in direct opposition to our conscious 

 will! yet they may be modified by the will or reason. 

 Habits easily become associated with other habits, with 

 certain periods of time, and states of the body. When 

 once acquired, they often remain constant throughout 

 life. Several other points of resemblance between in- 

 stincts and habits could be pointed out. As in repeat- 

 ing a well-known song, so in instincts, one action fol- 

 lows another by a sort of rhythm; if a person be inter- 

 rupted in a song, or in repeating anything by rote, he is 

 generally forced to go back to recover the habitual train 

 of thought; so P. Huber found it was with a eater- 

 pillar, which makes a very complicated hammock; for 

 if he took a caterpillar which had completed its ham- 

 mock up to, say, the sixth stage of construction, and put 

 it into a hammock completed up only to the third stage, 

 the caterpillar simply re-performed the fourth, fifth, and 

 sixth stages of construction. If, however, a caterpillar 

 were taken out of a hammock made up, for instance, 

 to the third stage, and were put into one finished up to 

 the sixth stage, so that much of its work was already 

 done for it, far from deriving any benefit from this, i'' 



