2. Instinct is a perfect guide. An instinct is innate and perfect from the first. Intellect hesitates and blunders; instinct advances to its end with mechanical certainty. Intellect improves; instinct is practically stationary.

3. Instinct is conscious activity. The bird is aware of its nest-building impulses. However dim in the lower orders of animals, consciousness may be safely inferred wherever instinct is manifested. Instincts, therefore, are now classed as mental; wherever we find instinct we find mind. The plant has life, but not mind. The brute has life and mind, but not self-conscious personality.

4. Instinct is limited to physical activity. Instincts are mental impulses leading to physical acts and physical ends. The mother-impulse in the bird to care for her young is mental; the act of securing food and feeding her birdlings is physical. All instincts seem connected with the perpetuation of organic life.

To speak of moral instincts or religious instincts is clearly incorrect. Intellect guides beings capable of moral acts.

Instinct defined.-Instinct is feeling. Like all feelings, instinct is blind; but, unlike all other feelings, instinct guides. Instincts are blind feelings implanted by Infinite Wisdom to move and guide animals where intellect can not act.

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· 1. Instinct is blind impulse guiding to wise ends. Instincts are blind impulses to adapt means to ends without knowing why. Without either knowledge or experience, the young bee constructs a perfect cell. Instincts are blind feelings moving and guiding to wise ends.

2. Original. Write a definition containing your view of instinct. What does instinct mean to you?

3. Various Definitions.-1. WHITE: Instincts are impulses which prompt and direct appropriate action in the absence of intelligence. 2. ROMANES: Instincts are adaptive impulses. 3. HOPKINS: Instinct is regulative impulse. 4. HAMILTON: Instinct is a blind tendency to intelligent ends. 5. VON HARTMANN: An instinctive act is one conformed to an end of which the actor is not conscious.

Reflex Action and Instinct.-The clock marks time, but its organism and action are wholly mechanical. The sensitive-plant responds to the touch, but its organism and action are wholly vegetable. The animal perspires and respires, but the organism and action are wholly vital. The order of the various forces is: mechanical forces, chemical forces, vital forces. Reflex action is a vital force. Like the sensitive-plant, the lower nerve-centers respond to stimuli and cause motion. Where the stimuli lie within the body, reflex action is called automatic action.

1. Reflex action is unconscious action. Bound up in the animal are forces which regulate nutrition, circulation, respiration, and non-voluntary motion. But mind is wanting in such acts. These actions are intrusted to ganglia and nerves and tissues which respond to stimuli. Reflex action is devoid of will-power and is wholly physical. Animals of the lowest orders are little more than reflex machines-they are nearly destitute of instinct as well as of intellect.

2. Instinctive action is conscious action. Reflex action is the highest physical force; instinct is the lowest mental energy. The action of the new-born infant in sucking is reflex action; but the act of the young

animal in seeking food is instinctive action. Instinct moves the spider to spin her web to capture her prey; but the act of spinning is reflex. Below instinct, no indication of mind appears. To some degree the animal seems to be aware of its instinctive acts, but is utterly unconscious of its reflex acts. Here we may venture to draw the line between the physical and the mental. Reflex action and all the lower forces are wholly physical. Instinctive action appears to be spontaneous as well as conscious action, and hence belongs to the realm of mind.

Instinct and Intellect.-Instinct is blind impulse which directs animal action in a way beneficial to the individual and the race. Intellect adapts means to ends and guides the feelings. Brutes and men are endowed with intellect as well as with instinct. Intellect enables its possessor to find out and act from knowledge; instinct moves the possessor to adapt means to ends without knowing why. Instinct guides the migrating bird; intellect guides the mariner. Instinct guides the bee in constructing a cell; but intellect guides the engineer in constructing a bridge.

1. As intellect increases, instinct decreases. Mollusks and still lower forms of animal life exhibit instinct and even infinitesimal intellect. But they are little more than creatures of reflex action.

In fact, many orders are scarcely more than automatons. The bee, the ant, and the spider seem most gifted with instinct. They also exhibit some intellect. In birds, beavers, dogs, and elephants we find instinct decreasing and intellect increasing.

2. As instinct increases, intellect decreases. The

elephant, the horse, and the dog manifest considerable intellect, but much less instinct than spiders, bees, and ants. As we go down the scale we find instinct increases just as intellect decreases.

INSTINCT,

BEES, ANTS, SPIDERS, ETC.

BIRDS

BEAVERS, FOXES, ETC.

MONKEYS, DOGS, ETC.

HORSES, ELEPHANTS, ETC.

M-ISSING LINKS

-MAN

INTELLECT.

lect vastly predominates in man; instinct in brutes. The gap here between the lowest man and the highest brute is immense. There appear to be many missing links.

In the accompanying diagram the relations of instinct and intellect are roughly indicated.

Man was created in the rational and moral image of God. Physically, he is separated, by a great gap, from all the animals nearest to him; and, even if we admit the doctrine, as yet unproved, of

the derivation of one species from another, in the case of the lower animals, we are unable to supply the "missing links" which would be required to connect man with any group of inferior animals. Mentally, the gap between man and the brute is practically infinite. Those who deny this must adopt one of two alternatives. Either they must refuse to admit the evidence in man of any nature higher than that of brutes-a conclusion which common sense, as well as mental science, must always refuse to admit-or they must attempt to bridge over the "chasm," as it has been called, which separates the instinctive nature of the animal from the rational and moral nature of man-an effort confessedly futile.*

The Instincts.-Instinct is a simple mental energy, as gravity is a simple physical force. It is ever the

* Principal Sir J. William Dawson, C. M. G., LL. D., F.R. S., President of the British Association.

same blind impulse moving to wise ends, and nothing more. But the instincts-the promptings of the instinctive energy—are numerous. These may be classed as strictly brute instincts, as instincts common to brute and man, and as strictly human instincts.

1. The brute instincts. The honey-making instinct of the bee, the web-weaving instinct of the spider, the nest-building instinct of the bird, the dam-building instinct of the beaver, the migratory instinct of many animals, are familiar examples of strictly brute instincts. The list of this class of instincts may be extended without limit. Are these specific brute instincts endowments or developments?

2. Instincts common to brute and man. These also are numerous. Sex-instincts, mother-instincts, dangerinstincts, food-instincts, etc., are common to brute and

man.

3. Human instincts. Instinct in man, as in the brute, is ever the same blind feeling, guiding actions to beneficial ends. In the domain of instinct, the brute stands vastly higher than man. The human infant is the most helpless and dependent of all young animals. It takes long years for us to learn to do intellectually what the brute does instinctively. Man is poor in instincts. Crying, smiling, frowning, etc., appear very early in infancy, and are strictly human instincts. The student is left here to find out other human instincts.

Origin of the Instincts.-Few questions now engage more thought. The following conclusions are believed to be safe:

1. Each instinct is an original endowment. Instincts are innate. Evolution modifies but does not