1895.] Psychology. 777 
In the human being we recognize as instinctive the impulsive acts, 
which fail to present any distinctively voluntary character. Some ap- 
pear to spring from an unconscious or involuntary tendency, others 
exist as elements of which the actor has no knowledge, others seem to 
result from some innate predisposition. To this class a large majority 
of all our acts belong. When we come to examine it more closely we 
find that the class contains two groups: the one includes those acts 
which contain no new element, but are mere repetitions of former acts. 
These are our habits, innate predispositions, ordinary operations of in- 
telligence, a priori intuitions of sense, a priori forms of the understand- 
ing, ete. All such processes have somewhat in common with instinct, 
and in common speech the word is often used of them. The other 
group, while closely akin to these, differs from them in that it contains 
a new element. Yet they have little in common with the clear voli- 
tions and deliberations with which we associate the notion of a new 
discovery. Few discoveries have, in fact, been so originated. They 
have rather been the results of a blind impulse, a feeling after the 
novel, which we can see throughout the animal world, and which has 
little in common with deliberate will. “ Thus, when one says that the 
human mind has been shaped and enriched by discovery (invention), 
one means that all the modes in which its activity develops are not 
primary data, of extrinsic origin, but productions of that very activity. 
Discovery is then neither reason, liberty, religious faith nor conscience ; 
it is not because we are reasonable, free, religious or moral, that we have 
so progressed and distanced the lower animals, but because we have dis- 
covered or created reason, liberty, religion and morality. Why? Wedo 
not know, and never shall know. How? It is for sociology and psy- 
chology to give us partial answers. Discovery is not an entity. Its 
concept resolves itself into that of the possibility of real action and of 
active mental change, and it simply indicates the point at which be- 
coming takes the place of repetition.” 
The power of discovery is not peculiar to the human race. It re- 
quires no high degree of consciousness or power of reflection. Itisa 
blind impulse, found in all animals and the new elements gained by it 
are concreted and amalgamated by habit and memory into what we 
see and call instincts. 
Thus far, Weber. The affinity between his thought and that of 
Baldwin is evident; the two classes into which Weber divides the more 
vague acts, Aabitudes and invention are clearly equivalent to Baldwin’s 
Habit and Accommodation. But Weber contents himself with a sim- 
ple nescio at the very point upon which Baldwin has done the best 
work, that is, How is Accommodation possible ? 
