634 Recent Studies in [November, 
to cause, and of recognising an “ order of Nature,’* not 
seldom finds himself dubbed a “ sceptic,” a “ free-thinker,’* 
or at least pronounced “ unsound.” 
We said that concerning the nature of this “ instinct ” we 
are as little agreed as were our forefathers a hundred years 
ago anent the attributes and the functions of phlogiston. 
The great bulk of non-naturalists — we might almost venture 
to call them ^/naturalists — hold that instinct, whilst per- 
forming to some extent the same functions as those which 
in us devolve upon reason, and being thus its substitute, is 
yet a power or faculty of a totally different order. There 
are thinkers, including a most eminent biologist of Evolu- 
tionist principles, who assert that animals remember places, 
persons, events, &c., not by dint of memory, but of “ quasi - 
memory ” ; that, in like manner, they decide on expedients 
to be adopted in some emergency, not in virtue of intelli- 
gence, but of “ ^^-intelligence.” It may well be asked 
whether, in thus multiplying imaginary faculties, they are 
not sinning against Newton’s celebrated regula philosophandi, 
A writer in the “ Journal of Science ” has pointed out that 
we might as well ascribe the fall of solid bodies upon the 
moon to “ #mm-gravitation.” 
Others, whilst admitting that the actions of animals are 
mainly instinctive, consider that they are “ very commonly 
tempered with a little dose of judgment or reason.” 
In the work before us we find an approximate definition of 
instinct to which little valid objection can be taken. Mr. 
Romanes regards it as “ mental action (whether in animals 
or human beings) directed towards the accomplishment of 
adaptive movement antecedent to individual experience, 
without necessary knowledge of the relation between the 
means employed and the ends attained, but similarly per- 
formed under appropriate circumstances by all the indivi- 
duals of the same species.” We are far from denying that 
mental action, of the character here laid down, occurs both 
in man and beast. The conduct of the solitary mason-wasp, 
or carpenter-bee, in building her nest must clearly be classed 
as instinctive, thus regarded. She has had no individual 
experience ; the nest is her first effort, and she never sur- 
vives to construct another. She has had no instruction, 
since she never saw her parents, who must have perished 
before she issued from the egg. Her mate and any other of 
her own species whom she may have seen are exactly in the 
same position as herself. Hence we need feel little surprise 
if early observers, who did not and could not enter into the 
genesis of these powers and aptitudes, saw in them the 
