Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 6.djvu/81

AN ATTEMPT AT A PSYCHOLOGY OF INSTINCT. 65 Wundt remarks that Darwin's theory explains instinct as " inherited habit determined principally by the influences of environment ". l And he adds that there is no necessary antagonism between this view and that which makes instinct a mechanised (or " lapsed ") intelligent action. Both theories are held by Wundt, Baldwin, Eomanes, Morgan, Sergi, Sully and others. Wundt is the only psychologist to attempt a definite state- ment of the nature of the intelligence present in instinct. In his fullest discussion of instinct he says : " A large number of the manifestations of mental lifein animals are rightly ascribed to individual experiences, the mechanism of which can only be explained in terms of association ". 2 And elsewhere he refers to instincts as " developed through ideas and the associative and intellectual processes involved in the apper- ception of ideas ". s Whatever may be the final decision upon the importance of intelligence in the formation of instincts, we are ourselves chiefly concerned with the analysis of intelligence so far as it is present in instincts, as they actually now exist. The follow- ing conclusions are supported by the best discussions of instinct, and seem to summarise all that can be definitely settled with regard to the place of intelligence in the complex process called instinct. Ideas are undoubtedly present, either in the sense of the perception of external objects or organic stimulus, or in the sense of the perception of the movements more or less directly connected with these per- ceptions. There is, however, in instinct proper, no idea of the end to which the movements are directed. The ideas present are often vague, though accompanied frequently by intense feeling or emotion, and there is no precise correlation between the perception of a given object and the instinctive action. (The chicken will peck at a carpet or a newspaper as readily as at a grain of corn.) We find intelligence here only in the narrow sense of simple association of ideas. And the connexion of instinctive movements with the ideas that initiate instincts is largely dependent, as we shall see later, upon the presence of some feeling, emotion or mental dis- position. Instinct, then, is not essentially an idea or group of ideas. We have now to turn to more difficult questions : the relation of instinct to impulse, and to feeling. 4. Instinct and Impulse: Is Instinct voluntary? Here, 1 Wundt's Human and Animal Psychology, tr., p. 889. 2 Op. cit., p. 390. 3 Wundt's Physiologische Psychologic, 4th ed., ii., p. 513. 5