III.

THE UNCONSCIOUS IN INSTINCT.

Instinct is purposive action without consciousness of the purpose. No one would call Instinct purposive action accompanied by consciousness of the purpose, where therefore the action is a result of reflection; just as little a purposeless blind action, such as the furious outbursts of rabid or irritated animals. I do not think that the above definition can be objected to by those who assume the existence of instinct; but whoever thinks it possible to refer all actions usually called instinctive to conscious reflection does, in fact, deny instinct altogether, and ought accordingly to strike the word "instinct" out of his vocabulary. But of this later on.

First of all, assuming the existence of instinctive actions in the sense of the definition, they might be explained: (1.) As a mere consequence of corporeal organisation; (2.) as a cerebral or mental mechanism contrived by Nature; (3.) as a result of unconscious mental activity. In the first two cases the idea of purpose lies far back; in the last it immediately precedes action. In the first two an arrangement given once for all is used as means, and purpose is only once concerned in constituting this arrangement; in the latter, the end is imagined in every single case. Let us take the three cases in order.

Instinct is not the mere result of bodily organisation, for: (a.) Instincts are quite different with similar bodily structures. All spiders have the same spinning apparatus, but one kind constructs its web radially, another in an

irregular manner; a third does not construct a web at all, but lives in hollows, over the walls of which it spins, closing the entrance with a door. Almost all birds have essentially the same organisation for building nests (beak and feet), and how infinitely diverse are their nests in form, architecture, mode of fastening (standing, clinging, hanging), locality (caves, holes, corners, forked branches, shrubs, the ground), and excellence, how different often in the species of the same genus, eg., Parus (titmouse). Several birds do not build nests at all. Most birds with webbed feet swim, but some not, e.g., upland geese, which seldom or never enter the water, or the frigate-bird, which is always hovering in the air, and which no one except Audubon has ever seen alight on the surface of the sea. Just as little do the different varieties of the song of birds depend on the difference in their vocal organs, or the peculiar architecture of bees and ants on their bodily organisation; in all these cases the organisation only capacitates for singing or building in general, but has nothing to do with the mode of execution. Sexual selection, likewise, has nothing to do with organisation, since the disposition of the sexual organs in any animal would be as well adapted for the members of numberless foreign species as for an individual of its own species. The nurture, protection, and training of the young can still less be considered dependent on the bodily structure. The same may be said of the place where the insect lays its eggs, or the selection of the spawn of their own kind on which the male fish discharge their seed. The rabbit burrows, but not the hare with similar organs for digging, but it less needs a subterranean place of refuge on account of its greater speed. Some birds that fly remarkably well are stationary birds. (e.g., kites and other birds of prey), and many moderate flyers (e.g., swallows) take the longest journeys.

(b.) The same instincts appear with different organisations. Birds with and without climbing feet, monkeys with and without prehensile tails, squirrel, sloth, puma, &c., live

on trees. The Mole-Cricket burrows with the prominent fossorial organs of its anterior extremities, the Burying Beetle digs without any arrangement for the purpose. The Hamster carries in its winter stores with its cheekpouches, 3 centim. long and 1 centim. broad, the fieldmouse does the same without any special apparatus. Birds live in the water just as well without as with web feet; at any rate, Divers (Podiceps) and Waders (Fulica) are excellent aquatic birds, although their toes are only fringed by a web. Birds with elongated tarsus and long unconnected toes are for the most part mársh-birds, but with the same structure of the feet the Moor-hen (Ortygometra) is almost as much an aquatic bird as the Water-hen, and the Crake (Crex) is almost as much a land-bird as the quail or the partridge. The migratory impulse is manifested with equal intensity by animals of the most different orders, and irrespective of the outfit with which they undertake their journey by water, land, or air.

It must accordingly be admitted that Instinct is in a high degree independent of bodily organisation. That a certain kind of bodily organisation is conditio sine qua non of its manifestation is a matter of course; for without sexual parts no procreation, without certain appropriate organs no artificial construction, without spinnerets. no spinning; but in spite of this no one can say that organisation is the cause of instinct. The mere existence. of an organ does not furnish the slightest motive for the exercise of a corresponding activity; for that there must be at least a feeling of pleasure in the use of the organ; this may then serve as motive to action. But even then, if the agreeable feeling affords an incentive to action, only the that, not the how, of this activity is determined by the organisation. The law of action, however, is precisely that which constitutes the problem to be solved. Nobody would call it instinct if the spider caused the secretion to flow from its over-filled spinning-glands in order to procure the satisfaction of the discharge, or

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if the fish for the same reason simply discharged its seed into the water. The instinct and the marvel consist in this, that the spider spins threads and makes the threads into a web, and that the fish discharges its seed only on the eggs of its own species. Lastly, the agreeable sensation in the use of the organs is an altogether insufficient motive for the activity itself; for what is at once grand and awe-inspiring in instinct is, that its behests are obeyed with utter disregard of all personal well-being, even at the cost of life itself. Were merely the pleasant feeling of the emptying of the spinning glands the motive why the caterpillar spins, it would only continue to spin. till its glandular sac was emptied, but it would not perpetually repair a continually destroyed web till it died of exhaustion. It is just the same with all other instincts, the causes of which are apparently personal pleasure. As soon as the circumstances are altered, so that in place of individual weal individual sacrifice occurs, their higher origin is unmistakably shown. Thus, e.g., it might be said that birds tread for the sake of sexual enjoyment, but why then do they no longer repeat the treading when the proper number of eggs is laid? The sexual impulse indeed still exists, for, if an egg be taken from the nest, they recommence treading and the hen lays another egg, or, if they belong to the cleverer birds, they quit the nest and rear a fresh brood. A hen of Ignex torquilla (Wryneck), whose deposited egg was continually removed from the nest, kept on laying, each egg being smaller than the preceding, until at the twenty-ninth egg the bird was found dead in the nest. If an instinct does not stand the test of a sacrifice imposed at the cost of individual well-being, if it really merely proceeds from the endeavour after bodily pleasure, it is not true instinct, and can only be so deemed by mistake.

Instinct is not a cerebral or mental mechanism implanted by Nature, so that the instinctive action could be executed without individual (if also unconscious) mental activity,

The

and without an idea of the purpose of the action, after the manner of a machine,-the end being conceived once for all by Nature or a Providence, which had so contrived the psychical organisation that only a mechanical use of the means remained to the individual. The suggestion now is, that a psychical, not a physical, organisation is the cause of instinct. This explanation would be at once acceptable, if any instinct appertaining to an animal were functional without intermission, This is not true, however, of any instinct, for each waits upon a motive; which, according to our view, signifies the occurrence of appropriate external circumstances making possible the attainment of the end by those means which instinct wills; not till then is instinct functional as actual will, with action at its heels; before the motive is present, instinct remains latent, as it were, and is not functional. motive appears in the mind in the form of sensuous presentation, and the connection is constant between the active instinct and all sense-perceptions, which indicate that the opportunity has arrived for the attainment of the purpose of the instinct. The psychical mechanism would accordingly have to be sought in this constant connection. We should again have to imagine a sort of keyboard; the struck keys would be the motives, and the resounding notes the functional instincts. This might be satisfactory in spite of the remarkable fact that keys altogether different give out the same sound, if only instinct were really comparable to definite tones, i.e., if one and the same instinct really always reacted in one and the same way on the appropriate motives. This, however, is not the case, but the only constant element is the unconscious purpose of the instinct; the instinct itself, however, like the willing of the means, varies just as much as the means to be appropriately applied vary according to the external circumstances. An hypothesis which rejects the unconscious idea of the end in each single case is accordingly condemned; for if it were desired to retain in