1895.] Psychology. 775 
more complex te the more simple instead of in the reverse direction, 
and consequently we find the characteristics of the more complex types 
ascribed to the acts of animals in general. These traits are finality, or 
conduciveness to an end, uniformity, and automatic fatality. These, 
therefore, have been grouped together and termed instinctive, in the 
narrower sense of the word. 
At this point philosophy stepped in and brought the problem into 
its present shape. The first of the three traits, conduciveness to an 
end, seems to show an affinity to intelligence; the other two, uniform- 
ity and automatic fatality, would put instinct in the same category 
with mechanisms. And the efforts at explanation proposed show the 
difficulty of reconciling these conceptions. Thus Hegel terms it an un- 
conscious activity tending towards an end; Schopenhauer, the uni- 
versal will not yet become clearly self-conscious; Hartmann, instinct 
is the Unconscious. Montaigne identifies it with intelligent reason, 
while Descartes claims that it has no mental existence whatever. The 
most interesting of these theories, however, are those which not only 
recognize the existence of mental elements in the instinctive act, but 
endeavor to determine their character. All agree in interpreting 
them, after the analogy of our own innate and habitual acts, as involv- 
ing desires, appetites, a vague sense of discomfort, without clear con- 
sciousness of the end or volition to realize it, followed, when the end is 
gained, by subsidence of desire and a sense of comfort, repose, equilib- 
rium. No detailed criticism of this interpretation is necessary ; it is 
- enough to say that it rests upon our own experience alone and must 
not be regarded as more than probably correct. 
The above theories deal with the nature of instinct. When we turn 
to its mode of functioning, we find that the explanations proposed 
largely depend upon the theories formed of its nature. The only one 
that need engage our attention at present is that which explains in- 
stinct by the analogy of habit. Its functioning, then, depends upon 
the existence of certain preformed tendencies to act, ingrained in the 
nervous system of the animal ; the start is given by appetite, blind im- 
pulse, the painful feeling that drives an organism to movement in con- 
junction with the external impressions which fire the mental mechan- 
ism. Thus, the instinctive act arises as the joint product of nervous 
organization and environment. 
It is evident that this theory stands in need of some account of the 
manner in which the nervous organization has been got. The expla- 
nations proposed fall under three captions : those that ascribe the ori- 
gin of instinct to more simple phenomena, explicable upon purely 
