Oral tradition and written history have been called the memory of man,

and this is not without its truth. But there is another and a living

memory in the innate reproductive power of brain substance, and without

this both writings and oral tradition would be without significance to

posterity. The most sublime ideas, though never so immortalised in

speech or letters, are yet nothing for heads that are out of harmony with

them; they must be not only heard, but reproduced; and both speech and

writing would be in vain were there not an inheritance of inward and

outward brain development, growing in correspondence with the inheritance

of ideas that are handed down from age to age, and did not an enhanced

capacity for their reproduction on the part of each succeeding generation

accompany the thoughts that have been preserved in writing. Man’s

conscious memory comes to an end at death, but the unconscious memory of

Nature is true and ineradicable: whoever succeeds in stamping upon her

the impress of his work, she will remember him to the end of time.

Chapter VII

Introduction to a translation of the chapter upon instinct in Von

Hartmann’s “Philosophy of the Unconscious.”

I AM afraid my readers will find the chapter on instinct from Von

Hartmann’s “Philosophy of the Unconscious,” which will now follow, as

distasteful to read as I did to translate, and would gladly have spared

it them if I could. At present, the works of Mr. Sully, who has treated

of the “Philosophy of the Unconscious” both in the _Westminster Review_

(vol. xlix. N.S.) and in his work “Pessimism,” are the best source to

which English readers can have recourse for information concerning Von

Hartmann. Giving him all credit for the pains he has taken with an

ungrateful, if not impossible subject, I think that a sufficient sample

of Von Hartmann’s own words will be a useful adjunct to Mr. Sully’s work,

and may perhaps save some readers trouble by resolving them to look no

farther into the “Philosophy of the Unconscious.” Over and above this, I

have been so often told that the views concerning unconscious action

contained in the foregoing lecture and in “Life and Habit” are only the

very fallacy of Von Hartmann over again, that I should like to give the

public an opportunity of seeing whether this is so or no, by placing the

two contending theories of unconscious action side by side. I hope that

it will thus be seen that neither Professor Hering nor I have fallen into

the fallacy of Von Hartmann, but that rather Von Hartmann has fallen into

his fallacy through failure to grasp the principle which Professor Hering

has insisted upon, and to connect heredity with memory.

Professor Hering’s philosophy of the unconscious is of extreme

simplicity. He rests upon a fact of daily and hourly experience, namely,

that practice makes things easy that were once difficult, and often

results in their being done without any consciousness of effort. But if

the repetition of an act tends ultimately, under certain circumstances,

to its being done unconsciously, so also is the fact of an intricate and

difficult action being done unconsciously an argument that it must have

been done repeatedly already. As I said in “Life and Habit,” it is more

easy to suppose that occasions on which such an action has been performed

have not been wanting, even though we do not see when and where they

were, than that the facility which we observe should have been attained

without practice and memory (p. 56).

There can be nothing better established or more easy, whether to

understand or verify, than the unconsciousness with which habitual

actions come to be performed. If, however, it is once conceded that it

is the manner of habitual action generally, then all _à priori_ objection

to Professor Hering’s philosophy of the unconscious is at an end. The

question becomes one of fact in individual cases, and of degree.

How far, then, does the principle of the convertibility, as it were, of

practice and unconsciousness extend? Can any line be drawn beyond which

it shall cease to operate? If not, may it not have operated and be

operating to a vast and hitherto unsuspected extent? This is all, and

certainly it is sufficiently simple. I sometimes think it has found its

greatest stumbling-block in its total want of mystery, as though we must

be like those conjurers whose stock in trade is a small deal table and a

kitchen-chair with bare legs, and who, with their parade of “no

deception” and “examine everything for yourselves,” deceive worse than

others who make use of all manner of elaborate paraphernalia. It is true

we require no paraphernalia, and we produce unexpected results, but we

are not conjuring.

To turn now to Von Hartmann. When I read Mr. Sully’s article in the

_Westminster Review_, I did not know whether the sense of mystification

which it produced in me was wholly due to Von Hartmann or no; but on

making acquaintance with Von Hartmann himself, I found that Mr. Sully has

erred, if at all, in making him more intelligible than he actually is.

Von Hartmann has not got a meaning. Give him Professor Hering’s key and

he might get one, but it would be at the expense of seeing what approach

he had made to a system fallen to pieces. Granted that in his details

and subordinate passages he often both has and conveys a meaning, there

is, nevertheless, no coherence between these details, and the nearest

approach to a broad conception covering the work which the reader can

carry away with him is at once so incomprehensible and repulsive, that it

is difficult to write about it without saying more perhaps than those who

have not seen the original will accept as likely to be true. The idea to

which I refer is that of an unconscious clairvoyance, which, from the

language continually used concerning it, must be of the nature of a

person, and which is supposed to take possession of living beings so

fully as to be the very essence of their nature, the promoter of their

embryonic development, and the instigator of their instinctive actions.

This approaches closely to the personal God of Mosaic and Christian

theology, with the exception that the word “clairvoyance” {89} is

substituted for God, and that the God is supposed to be unconscious.

Mr. Sully says:—

“When we grasp it [the philosophy of Von Hartmann] as a whole, it

amounts to nothing more than this, that all or nearly all the

phenomena of the material and spiritual world rest upon and result

from a mysterious, unconscious being, though to call it being is

really to add on an idea not immediately contained within the

all-sufficient principle. But what difference is there between this

and saying that the phenomena of the world at large come we know not

whence? . . . The unconscious, therefore, tends to be simple phrase

and nothing more . . . No doubt there are a number of mental

processes . . . of which we are unconscious . . . but to infer from

this that they are due to an unconscious power, and to proceed to

demonstrate them in the presence of the unconscious through all

nature, is to make an unwarrantable _saltus_ in reasoning. What, in

fact, is this ‘unconscious’ but a high-sounding name to veil our

ignorance? Is the unconscious any better explanation of phenomena we

do not understand than the ‘devil-devil’ by which Australian tribes

explain the Leyden jar and its phenomena? Does it increase our

knowledge to know that we do not know the origin of language or the

cause of instinct? . . . Alike in organic creation and the evolution

of history ‘performances and actions’—the words are those of

Strauss—are ascribed to an unconscious, which can only belong to a

conscious being. {90a}

. . . . .

“The difficulties of the system advance as we proceed. {90b}

Subtract this questionable factor—the unconscious from Hartmann’s

‘Biology and Psychology,’ and the chapters remain pleasant and

instructive reading. But with the third part of his work—the

Metaphysic of the Unconscious—our feet are clogged at every step. We

are encircled by the merest play of words, the most unsatisfactory

demonstrations, and most inconsistent inferences. The theory of

final causes has been hitherto employed to show the wisdom of the

world; with our Pessimist philosopher it shows nothing but its

irrationality and misery. Consciousness has been generally supposed

to be the condition of all happiness and interest in life; here it

simply awakens us to misery, and the lower an animal lies in the

scale of conscious life, the better and the pleasanter its lot.

. . . . .

“Thus, then, the universe, as an emanation of the unconscious, has

been constructed. {90c} Throughout it has been marked by design, by

purpose, by finality; throughout a wonderful adaptation of means to

ends, a wonderful adjustment and relativity in different portions has

been noticed—and all this for what conclusion? Not, as in the hands

of the natural theologians of the eighteenth century, to show that

the world is the result of design, of an intelligent, beneficent

Creator, but the manifestation of a Being whose only predicates are

negatives, whose very essence is to be unconscious. It is not only

like ancient Athens, to an unknown, but to an unknowing God, that

modern Pessimism rears its altar. Yet surely the fact that the

motive principle of existence moves in a mysterious way outside our

consciousness no way requires that the All-one Being should be

himself unconscious.”

I believe the foregoing to convey as correct an idea of Von Hartmann’s

system as it is possible to convey, and will leave it to the reader to

say how much in common there is between this and the lecture given in the

preceding chapter, beyond the fact that both touch upon unconscious

actions. The extract which will form my next chapter is only about a

thirtieth part of the entire “Philosophy of the Unconscious,” but it

will, I believe, suffice to substantiate the justice of what Mr. Sully

has said in the passages above quoted.

As regards the accuracy of the translation, I have submitted all passages

about which I was in the least doubtful to the same gentleman who revised

my translation of Professor Hering’s lecture; I have also given the

German wherever I thought the reader might be glad to see it.

Chapter VIII

Translation of the chapter on “The Unconscious in Instinct,” from Von

Hartmann’s “Philosophy of the Unconscious.”

VON HARTMANN’S chapter on instinct is as follows:—

Instinct is action taken in pursuance of a purpose but without conscious

perception of what the purpose is. {92a}

A purposive action, with consciousness of the purpose and where the

course taken is the result of deliberation is not said to be instinctive;

nor yet, again, is blind aimless action, such as outbreaks of fury on the

part of offended or otherwise enraged animals. I see no occasion for

disturbing the commonly received definition of instinct as given above;

for those who think they can refer all the so-called ordinary instincts

of animals to conscious deliberation _ipso facto_ deny that there is such

a thing as instinct at all, and should strike the word out of their

vocabulary. But of this more hereafter.

Assuming, then, the existence of instinctive action as above defined, it

can be explained as—

I. A mere necessary consequence of bodily organisation. {92b}

II. A mechanism of brain or mind contrived by nature.

III. The outcome of an unconscious activity of mind.

In neither of the two first cases is there any scope for the idea of

purpose; in the third, purpose must be present immediately before the

action. In the two first cases, action is supposed to be brought about

by means of an initial arrangement, either of bodily or mental mechanism,

purpose being conceived of as existing on a single occasion only—that is

to say, in the determination of the initial arrangement. In the third,

purpose is conceived as present in every individual instance. Let us

proceed to the consideration of these three cases.

Instinct is not a mere consequence of bodily organisation; for—

(_a_.) Bodies may be alike, yet they may be endowed with different

instincts.

All spiders have the same spinning apparatus, but one kind weaves

radiating webs, another irregular ones, while a third makes none at all,

but lives in holes, whose walls it overspins, and whose entrance it

closes with a door. Almost all birds have a like organisation for the

construction of their nests (a beak and feet), but how infinitely do

their nests vary in appearance, mode of construction, attachment to

surrounding objects (they stand, are glued on, hang, &c.), selection of

site (caves, holes, corners, forks of trees, shrubs, the ground), and

excellence of workmanship; how often, too, are they not varied in the

species of a single genus, as of _parus_. Many birds, moreover, build no

nest at all. The difference in the songs of birds are in like manner

independent of the special construction of their voice apparatus, nor do

the modes of nest construction that obtain among ants and bees depend

upon their bodily organisation. Organisation, as a general rule, only

renders the bird capable of singing, as giving it an apparatus with which

to sing at all, but it has nothing to do with the specific character of

the execution . . . The nursing, defence, and education of offspring

cannot be considered as in any way more dependent upon bodily

organisation; nor yet the sites which insects choose for the laying of

their eggs; nor, again, the selection of deposits of spawn, of their own

species, by male fish for impregnation. The rabbit burrows, the hare

does not, though both have the same burrowing apparatus. The hare,

however, has less need of a subterranean place of refuge by reason of its

greater swiftness. Some birds, with excellent powers of flight, are

nevertheless stationary in their habits, as the secretary falcon and

certain other birds of prey; while even such moderate fliers as quails

are sometimes known to make very distant migrations.

(_b_.) Like instincts may be found associated with unlike organs.

Birds with and without feet adapted for climbing live in trees; so also

do monkeys with and without flexible tails, squirrels, sloths, pumas, &c.

Mole-crickets dig with a well-pronounced spade upon their fore-feet,

while the burying-beetle does the same thing though it has no special

apparatus whatever. The mole conveys its winter provender in pockets, an

inch wide, long and half an inch wide within its cheeks; the field-mouse

does so without the help of any such contrivance. The migratory instinct

displays itself with equal strength in animals of widely different form,

by whatever means they may pursue their journey, whether by water, land,

or air.

It is clear, therefore, that instinct is in great measure independent of

bodily organisation. Granted, indeed, that a certain amount of bodily

apparatus is a _sine quâ non_ for any power of execution at all—as, for

example, that there would be no ingenious nest without organs more or

less adapted for its construction, no spinning of a web without spinning

glands—nevertheless, it is impossible to maintain that instinct is a

consequence of organisation. The mere existence of the organ does not

constitute even the smallest incentive to any corresponding habitual

activity. A sensation of pleasure must at least accompany the use of the

organ before its existence can incite to its employment. And even so

when a sensation of pleasure has given the impulse which is to render it

active, it is only the fact of there being activity at all, and not the

special characteristics of the activity, that can be due to organisation.

The reason for the special mode of the activity is the very problem that

we have to solve. No one will call the action of the spider instinctive

in voiding the fluid from her spinning gland when it is too full, and

therefore painful to her; nor that of the male fish when it does what

amounts to much the same thing as this. The instinct and the marvel lie

in the fact that the spider spins threads, and proceeds to weave her web

with them, and that the male fish will only impregnate ova of his own

species.

Another proof that the pleasure felt in the employment of an organ is

wholly inadequate to account for this employment is to be found in the

fact that the moral greatness of instinct, the point in respect of which

it most commands our admiration, consists in the obedience paid to its

behests, to the postponement of all personal well-being, and at the cost,

it may be, of life itself. If the mere pleasure of relieving certain

glands from overfulness were the reason why caterpillars generally spin

webs, they would go on spinning until they had relieved these glands, but

they would not repair their work as often as any one destroyed it, and do

this again and again until they die of exhaustion. The same holds good

with the other instincts that at first sight appear to be inspired only

by a sensation of pleasure; for if we change the circumstances, so as to

put self-sacrifice in the place of self-interest, it becomes at once

apparent that they have a higher source than this. We think, for

example, that birds pair for the sake of mere sexual gratification; why,

then, do they leave off pairing as soon as they have laid the requisite

number of eggs? That there is a reproductive instinct over and above the

desire for sexual gratification appears from the fact that if a man takes

an egg out of the nest, the birds will come together again and the hen

will lay another egg; or, if they belong to some of the more wary

species, they will desert their nest, and make preparation for an

entirely new brood. A female wryneck, whose nest was daily robbed of the

egg she laid in it, continued to lay a new one, which grew smaller and

smaller, till, when she had laid her twenty-ninth egg, she was found dead

upon her nest. If an instinct cannot stand the test of self-sacrifice—if

it is the simple outcome of a desire for bodily gratification—then it is

no true instinct, and is only so called erroneously.

Instinct is not a mechanism of brain or mind implanted in living beings

by nature; for, if it were, then instinctive action without any, even

unconscious, activity of mind, and with no conception concerning the

purpose of the action, would be executed mechanically, the purpose having

been once for all thought out by Nature or Providence, which has so

organised the individual that it acts henceforth as a purely mechanical

medium. We are now dealing with a psychical organisation as the cause

instinct, as we were above dealing with a physical. A psychical

organisation would be a conceivable explanation and we need look no

farther if every instinct once belonging to an animal discharged its

functions in an unvarying manner. But this is never found to be the

case, for instincts vary when there arises a sufficient motive for

varying them. This proves that special exterior circumstances enter into

the matter, and that these circumstances are the very things that render

the attainment of the purpose possible through means selected by the

instinct. Here first do we find instinct acting as though it were

actually design with action following at its heels, for until the arrival

of the motive, the instinct remains late and discharges no function

whatever. The motive enters by way of an idea received into the mind

through the instrumentality of the senses, and there is a constant

connection between instinct in action and all sensual images which give

information that an opportunity has arisen for attaining the ends

proposed to itself by the instinct.

The psychical mechanism of this constant connection must also be looked

for. It may help us here to turn to the piano for an illustration. The

struck keys are the motives, the notes that sound in consequence are the

instincts in action. This illustration might perhaps be allowed to pass

(if we also suppose that entirely different keys can give out the same

sound) if instincts could only be compared with _distinctly tuned_ notes,

so that one and the same instinct acted always in the same manner on the

rising of the motive which should set it in action. This, however, is

not so; for it is the blind unconscious purpose of the instinct that is

alone constant, the instinct itself—that is to say, the will to make use

of certain means—varying as the means that can be most suitably employed

vary under varying circumstances.

In this we condemn the theory which refuses to recognise unconscious

purpose as present in each individual case of instinctive action. For he

who maintains instinct to be the result of a mechanism of mind, must

suppose a special and constant mechanism for each variation and

modification of the instinct in accordance with exterior circumstances,

{97} that is to say, a new string giving a note with a new tone must be

inserted, and this would involve the mechanism in endless complication.

But the fact that the purpose is constant notwithstanding all manner of

variation in the means chosen by the instinct, proves that there is no

necessity for the supposition of such an elaborate mental mechanism—the

presence of an unconscious purpose being sufficient to explain the facts.

The purpose of the bird, for example, that has laid her eggs is constant,

and consists in the desire to bring her young to maturity. When the

temperature of the air is insufficient to effect this, she sits upon her

eggs, and only intermits her sittings in the warmest countries; the

mammal, on the other hand, attains the fulfilment of its instinctive

purpose without any co-operation on its own part. In warm climates many

birds only sit by night, and small exotic birds that have built in

aviaries kept at a high temperature sit little upon their eggs or not at

all. How inconceivable is the supposition of a mechanism that impels the

bird to sit as soon as the temperature falls below a certain height! How

clear and simple, on the other hand, is the view that there is an

unconscious purpose constraining the volition of the bird to the use of

the fitting means, of which process, however, only the last link, that is

to say, the will immediately preceding the action falls within the

consciousness of the bird!

In South Africa the sparrow surrounds her nest with thorns as a defence

against apes and serpents. The eggs of the cuckoo, as regards size,

colour, and marking, invariably resemble those of the birds in whose

nests she lays. Sylvia _ruja_, for example, lays a white egg with violet

spots; _Sylvia hippolais_, a red one with black spots; _Regulus

ignicapellus_, a cloudy red; but the cuckoo’s egg is in each case so

deceptive an imitation of its model, that it can hardly be distinguished

except by the structure of its shell.

Huber contrived that his bees should be unable to build in their usual

instinctive manner, beginning from above and working downwards; on this

they began building from below, and again horizontally. The outermost

cells that spring from the top of the hive or abut against its sides are

not hexagonal, but pentagonal, so as to gain in strength, being attached

with one base instead of two sides. In autumn bees lengthen their

existing honey cells if these are insufficient, but in the ensuing spring

they again shorten them in order to get greater roadway between the

combs. When the full combs have become too heavy, they strengthen the

walls of the uppermost or bearing cells by thickening them with wax and

propolis. If larvæ of working bees are introduced into the cells set

apart for drones, the working bees will cover these cells with the flat

lids usual for this kind of larvæ, and not with the round ones that are

proper for drones. In autumn, as a general rule, bees kill their drones,

but they refrain from doing this when they have lost their queen, and

keep them to fertilise the young queen, who will be developed from larvæ

that would otherwise have become working bees. Huber observed that they

defend the entrance of their hive against the inroads of the sphinx moth

by means of skilful constructions made of wax and propolis. They only

introduce propolis when they want it for the execution of repairs, or for

some other special purpose. Spiders and caterpillars also display

marvellous dexterity in the repair of their webs if they have been

damaged, and this requires powers perfectly distinct from those requisite

for the construction of a new one.

The above examples might be multiplied indefinitely, but they are

sufficient to establish the fact that instincts are not capacities

rolled, as it were, off a reel mechanically, according to an invariable

system, but that they adapt themselves most closely to the circumstances

of each case, and are capable of such great modification and variation

that at times they almost appear to cease to be instinctive.

Many will, indeed, ascribe these modifications to conscious deliberation

on the part of the animals themselves, and it is impossible to deny that

in the case of the more intellectually gifted animals there may be such a

thing as a combination of instinctive faculty and conscious reflection.

I think, however, the examples already cited are enough to show that

often where the normal and the abnormal action springs from the same

source, without any complication with conscious deliberation, they are

either both instinctive or both deliberative. {99} Or is that which

prompts the bee to build hexagonal prisms in the middle of her comb

something of an actually distinct character from that which impels her to

build pentagonal ones at the sides? Are there two separate kinds of

thing, one of which induces birds under certain circumstances to sit upon

their eggs, while another leads them under certain other circumstances to

refrain from doing so? And does this hold good also with bees when they

at one time kill their brethren without mercy and at another grant them

their lives? Or with birds when they construct the kind of nest peculiar

to their race, and, again, any special provision which they may think fit

under certain circumstances to take? If it is once granted that the

normal and the abnormal manifestations of instinct—and they are often

incapable of being distinguished—spring from a single source, then the

objection that the modification is due to conscious knowledge will be

found to be a suicidal one later on, so far as it is directed against

instinct generally. It may be sufficient here to point out, in

anticipation of remarks that will be found in later chapters, that

instinct and the power of organic development involve the same essential

principle, though operating under different circumstances—the two melting

into one another without any definite boundary between them. Here, then,

we have conclusive proof that instinct does not depend upon organisation

of body or brain, but that, more truly, the organisation is due to the

nature and manner of the instinct.

On the other hand, we must now return to a closer consideration of the

conception of a psychical mechanism. {100} And here we find that this

mechanism, in spite of its explaining so much, is itself so obscure that

we can hardly form any idea concerning it. The motive enters the mind by

way of a conscious sensual impression; this is the first link of the

process; the last link {101} appears as the conscious motive of an

action. Both, however, are entirely unlike, and neither has anything to

do with ordinary motivation, which consists exclusively in the desire

that springs from a conception either of pleasure or dislike—the former

prompting to the attainment of any object, the latter to its avoidance.

In the case of instinct, pleasure is for the most part a concomitant

phenomenon; but it is not so always, as we have already seen, inasmuch as

the consummation and highest moral development of instinct displays

itself in self-sacrifice.

The true problem, however, lies far deeper than this. For every

conception of a pleasure proves that we have experienced this pleasure

already. But it follows from this, that when the pleasure was first felt

there must have been will present, in the gratification of which will the

pleasure consisted; the question, therefore, arises, whence did the will

come before the pleasure that would follow on its gratification was

known, and before bodily pain, as, for example, of hunger, rendered

relief imperative? Yet we may see that even though an animal has grown

up apart from any others of its kind, it will yet none the less manifest

the instinctive impulses of its race, though experience can have taught

it nothing whatever concerning the pleasure that will ensue upon their

gratification. As regards instinct, therefore, there must be a causal

connection between the motivating sensual conception and the will to

perform the instinctive action, and the pleasure of the subsequent

gratification has nothing to do with the matter. We know by the

experience of our own instincts that this causal connection does not lie

within our consciousness; {102a} therefore, if it is to be a mechanism of

any kind, it can only be either an unconscious mechanical induction and

metamorphosis of the vibrations of the conceived motive into the

vibrations of the conscious action in the brain, or an unconscious

spiritual mechanism.

In the first case, it is surely strange that this process should go on

unconsciously, though it is so powerful in its effects that the will

resulting from it overpowers every other consideration, every other kind

of will, and that vibrations of this kind, when set up in the brain,

become always consciously perceived; nor is it easy to conceive in what

way this metamorphosis can take place so that the constant purpose can be

attained under varying circumstances by the resulting will in modes that

vary with variation of the special features of each individual case.

But if we take the other alternative, and suppose an unconscious mental

mechanism, we cannot legitimately conceive of the process going on in

this as other than what prevails in all mental mechanism, namely, than as

by way of idea and will. We are, therefore, compelled to imagine a

causal connection between the consciously recognised motive and the will

to do the instinctive action, through unconscious idea and will; nor do I

know how this connection can be conceived as being brought about more

simply than through a conceived and willed purpose. {102b} Arrived at

this point, however, we have attained the logical mechanism peculiar to

and inseparable from all mind, and find unconscious purpose to be an

indispensable link in every instinctive action. With this, therefore,

the conception of a mental mechanism, dead and predestined from without,

has disappeared, and has become transformed into the spiritual life

inseparable from logic, so that we have reached the sole remaining

requirement for the conception of an actual instinct, which proves to be

a conscious willing of the means towards an unconsciously willed purpose.

This conception explains clearly and without violence all the problems

which instinct presents to us; or more truly, all that was problematical

about instinct disappears when its true nature has been thus declared.

If this work were confined to the consideration of instinct alone, the

conception of an unconscious activity of mind might excite opposition,

inasmuch as it is one with which our educated public is not yet familiar;

but in a work like the present, every chapter of which adduces fresh

facts in support of the existence of such an activity and of its

remarkable consequences, the novelty of the theory should be taken no

farther into consideration.

Though I so confidently deny that instinct is the simple action of a

mechanism which has been contrived once for all, I by no means exclude

the supposition that in the constitution of the brain, the ganglia, and

the whole body, in respect of morphological as well as

molecular-physiological condition, certain predispositions can be

established which direct the unconscious intermediaries more readily into

one channel than into another. This predisposition is either the result

of a habit which keeps continually cutting for itself a deeper and deeper

channel, until in the end it leaves indelible traces whether in the

individual or in the race, or it is expressly called into being by the

unconscious formative principle in generation, so as to facilitate action

in a given direction. This last will be the case more frequently in

respect of exterior organisation—as, for example, with the weapons or

working organs of animals—while to the former must be referred the

molecular condition of brain and ganglia which bring about the

perpetually recurring elements of an instinct such as the hexagonal shape

of the cells of bees. We shall presently see that by individual

character we mean the sum of the individual methods of reaction against

all possible motives, and that this character depends essentially upon a

constitution of mind and body acquired in some measure through habit by

the individual, but for the most part inherited. But an instinct is also

a mode of reaction against certain motives; here, too, then, we are

dealing with character, though perhaps not so much with that of the

individual as of the race; for by character in regard to instinct we do

not intend the differences that distinguish individuals, but races from

one another. If any one chooses to maintain that such a predisposition

for certain kinds of activity on the part of brain and body constitutes a

mechanism, this may in one sense be admitted; but as against this view it

must be remarked—

1. That such deviations from the normal scheme of an instinct as cannot

be referred to conscious deliberation are not provided for by any

predisposition in this mechanism.

2. That heredity is only possible under the circumstances of a constant

superintendence of the embryonic development by a purposive unconscious

activity of growth. It must be admitted, however, that this is

influenced in return by the predisposition existing in the germ.

3. That the impressing of the predisposition upon the individual from

whom it is inherited can only be effected by long practice, consequently

the instinct without auxiliary mechanism {105a} is the originating cause

of the auxiliary mechanism.

4. That none of those instinctive actions that are performed rarely, or

perhaps once only, in the lifetime of any individual—as, for example,

those connected with the propagation and metamorphoses of the lower forms

of life, and none of those instinctive omissions of action, neglect of

which necessarily entails death—can be conceived as having become

engrained into the character through habit; the ganglionic constitution,

therefore, that predisposes the animal towards them must have been

fashioned purposively.

5. That even the presence of an auxiliary mechanism {105b} does not

compel the unconscious to a particular corresponding mode of instinctive

action, but only predisposes it. This is shown by the possibility of

departure from the normal type of action, so that the unconscious purpose

is always stronger than the ganglionic constitution, and takes any

opportunity of choosing from several similar possible courses the one

that is handiest and most convenient to the constitution of the

individual.

We now approach the question that I have reserved for our final one,—Is

there, namely, actually such a thing as instinct, {105c} or are all

so-called instinctive actions only the results of conscious deliberation?

In support of the second of these two views, it may be alleged that the

more limited is the range of the conscious mental activity of any living

being, the more fully developed in proportion to its entire mental power

is its performance commonly found to be in respect of its own limited and

special instinctive department. This holds as good with the lower

animals as with men, and is explained by the fact that perfection of

proficiency is only partly dependent upon natural capacity, but is in

great measure due to practice and cultivation of the original faculty. A

philologist, for example, is unskilled in questions of jurisprudence; a

natural philosopher or mathematician, in philology; an abstract

philosopher, in poetical criticism. Nor has this anything to do with the

natural talents of the several persons, but follows as a consequence of

their special training. The more special, therefore, is the direction in

which the mental activity of any living being is exercised, the more will

the whole developing and practising power of the mind be brought to bear

upon this one branch, so that it is not surprising if the special power

comes ultimately to bear an increased proportion to the total power of

the individual, through the contraction of the range within which it is

exercised.

Those, however, who apply this to the elucidation of instinct should not

forget the words, “in proportion to the entire mental power of the animal

in question,” and should bear in mind that the entire mental power

becomes less and less continually as we descend the scale of animal life,

whereas proficiency in the performance of an instinctive action seems to

be much of a muchness in all grades of the animal world. As, therefore,

those performances which indisputably proceed from conscious deliberation

decrease proportionately with decrease of mental power, while nothing of

the kind is observable in the case of instinct—it follows that instinct

must involve some other principle than that of conscious intelligence.

We see, moreover, that actions which have their source in conscious

intelligence are of one and the same kind, whether among the lower

animals or with mankind—that is to say, that they are acquired by

apprenticeship or instruction and perfected by practice; so that the

saying, “Age brings wisdom,” holds good with the brutes as much as with

ourselves. Instinctive actions, on the contrary, have a special and

distinct character, in that they are performed with no less proficiency

by animals that have been reared in solitude than by those that have been

instructed by their parents, the first essays of a hitherto unpractised

animal being as successful as its later ones. There is a difference in

principle here which cannot be mistaken. Again, we know by experience

that the feebler and more limited an intelligence is, the more slowly do

ideas act upon it, that is to say, the slower and more laborious is its

conscious thought. So long as instinct does not come into play, this

holds good both in the case of men of different powers of comprehension

and with animals; but with instinct all is changed, for it is the

speciality of instinct never to hesitate or loiter, but to take action

instantly upon perceiving that the stimulating motive has made its

appearance. This rapidity in arriving at a resolution is common to the

instinctive actions both of the highest and the lowest animals, and

indicates an essential difference between instinct and conscious

deliberation.

Finally, as regards perfection of the power of execution, a glance will

suffice to show the disproportion that exists between this and the grade

of intellectual activity on which an animal may be standing. Take, for

instance, the caterpillar of the emperor moth (_Saturnia pavonia minor_).

It eats the leaves of the bush upon which it was born; at the utmost has

just enough sense to get on to the lower sides of the leaves if it begins

to rain, and from time to time changes its skin. This is its whole

existence, which certainly does not lead us to expect a display of any,

even the most limited, intellectual power. When, however, the time comes

for the larva of this moth to become a chrysalis, it spins for itself a

double cocoon, fortified with bristles that point outwards, so that it

can be opened easily from within, though it is sufficiently impenetrable

from without. If this contrivance were the result of conscious

reflection, we should have to suppose some such reasoning process as the

following to take place in the mind of the caterpillar:—“I am about to

become a chrysalis, and, motionless as I must be, shall be exposed to

many different kinds of attack. I must therefore weave myself a web.

But when I am a moth I shall not be able, as some moths are, to find my

way out of it by chemical or mechanical means; therefore I must leave a

way open for myself. In order, however, that my enemies may not take

advantage of this, I will close it with elastic bristles, which I can

easily push asunder from within, but which, upon the principle of the

arch, will resist all pressure from without.” Surely this is asking

rather too much from a poor caterpillar; yet the whole of the foregoing

must be thought out if a correct result is to be arrived at.

This theoretical separation of instinct from conscious intelligence can

be easily misrepresented by opponents of my theory, as though a

separation in practice also would be necessitated in consequence. This

is by no means my intention. On the contrary, I have already insisted at

some length that both the two kinds of mental activity may co-exist in

all manner of different proportions, so that there may be every degree of

combination, from pure instinct to pure deliberation. We shall see,

however, in a later chapter, that even in the highest and most abstract

activity of human consciousness there are forces at work that are of the

highest importance, and are essentially of the same kind as instinct.

On the other hand, the most marvellous displays of instinct are to be

found not only in plants, but also in those lowest organisms of the

simplest bodily form which are partly unicellular, and in respect of

conscious intelligence stand far below the higher plants—to which,

indeed, any kind of deliberative faculty is commonly denied. Even in the

case of those minute microscopic organisms that baffle our attempts to

classify them either as animals or vegetables, we are still compelled to

admire an instinctive, purposive behaviour, which goes far beyond a mere

reflex responsive to a stimulus from without; all doubt, therefore,

concerning the actual existence of an instinct must be at an end, and the

attempt to deduce it as a consequence of conscious deliberation be given

up as hopeless. I will here adduce an instance as extraordinary as any

we yet know of, showing, as it does, that many different purposes, which

in the case of the higher animals require a complicated system of organs

of motion, can be attained with incredibly simple means.

_Arcella vulgaris_ is a minute morsel of protoplasm, which lives in a

concave-convex, brown, finely reticulated shell, through a circular

opening in the concave side of which it can project itself by throwing

out _pseudopodia_. If we look through the microscope at a drop of water

containing living _arcellæ_, we may happen to see one of them lying on

its back at the bottom of the drop, and making fruitless efforts for two

or three minutes to lay hold of some fixed point by means of a

_pseudopodium_. After this there will appear suddenly from two to five,

but sometimes more, dark points in the protoplasm at a small distance

from the circumference, and, as a rule, at regular distances from one

another. These rapidly develop themselves into well-defined spherical

air vesicles, and come presently to fill a considerable part of the

hollow of the shell, thereby driving part of the protoplasm outside it.

After from five to twenty minutes, the specific gravity of the _arcella_

is so much lessened that it is lifted by the water with its

_pseudopodia_, and brought up against the upper surface of the

water-drop, on which it is able to travel. In from five to ten minutes

the vesicles will now disappear, the last small point vanishing with a

jerk. If, however, the creature has been accidentally turned over during

its journey, and reaches the top of the water-drop with its back

uppermost, the vesicles will continue growing only on one side, while

they diminish on the other; by this means the shell is brought first into

an oblique and then into a vertical position, until one of the

_pseudopodia_ obtains a footing and the whole turns over. From the

moment the animal has obtained foothold, the bladders become immediately

smaller, and after they have disappeared the experiment may be repeated

at pleasure.

The positions of the protoplasm which the vesicles fashion change

continually; only the grainless protoplasm of the _pseudopodia_ develops

no air. After long and fruitless efforts a manifest fatigue sets in; the

animal gives up the attempt for a time, and resumes it after an interval

of repose.

Engelmann, the discoverer of these phenomena, says (Pflüger’s Archiv für

Physologie, Bd. II.): “The changes in volume in all the vesicles of the

same animal are for the most part synchronous, effected in the same

manner, and of like size. There are, however, not a few exceptions; it

often happens that some of them increase or diminish in volume much

faster than others; sometimes one may increase while another diminishes;

all the changes, however, are throughout unquestionably intentional. The

object of the air-vesicles is to bring the animal into such a position

that it can take fast hold of something with its _pseudopodia_. When

this has been obtained, the air disappears without our being able to

discover any other reason for its disappearance than the fact that it is

no longer needed. . . . If we bear these circumstances in mind, we can

almost always tell whether an _arcella_ will develop air-vesicles or no;

and if it has already developed them, we can tell whether they will

increase or diminish . . . The _arcellæ_, in fact, in this power of

altering their specific gravity possess a mechanism for raising

themselves to the top of the water, or lowering themselves to the bottom

at will. They use this not only in the abnormal circumstances of their

being under microscopical observation, but at all times, as may be known

by our being always able to find some specimens with air-bladders at the

top of the water in which they live.”

If what has been already advanced has failed to convince the reader of

the hopelessness of attempting to explain instinct as a mode of conscious

deliberation, he must admit that the following considerations are

conclusive. It is most certain that deliberation and conscious

reflection can only take account of such data as are consciously

perceived; if, then, it can be shown that data absolutely indispensable

for the arrival at a just conclusion cannot by any possibility have been

known consciously, the result can no longer be held as having had its

source in conscious deliberation. It is admitted that the only way in

which consciousness can arrive at a knowledge of exterior facts is by way

of an impression made upon the senses. We must, therefore, prove that a

knowledge of the facts indispensable for arrival at a just conclusion

could not have been thus acquired. This may be done as follows: {111}

for, Firstly, the facts in question lie in the future, and the present

gives no ground for conjecturing the time and manner of their subsequent

development.

Secondly, they are manifestly debarred from the category of perceptions

perceived through the senses, inasmuch as no information can be derived

concerning them except through experience of similar occurrences in time

past, and such experience is plainly out of the question.

It would not affect the argument if, as I think likely, it were to turn

out, with the advance of our physiological knowledge, that all the

examples of the first case that I am about to adduce reduce themselves to

examples of the second, as must be admitted to have already happened in

respect of many that I have adduced hitherto. For it is hardly more

difficult to conceive of _à priori_ knowledge, disconnected from any

impression made upon the senses, than of knowledge which, it is true,

does at the present day manifest itself upon the occasion of certain

general perceptions, but which can only be supposed to be connected with

these by means of such a chain of inferences and judiciously applied

knowledge as cannot be believed to exist when we have regard to the

capacity and organisation of the animal we may be considering.

An example of the first case is supplied by the larva of the stag-beetle

in its endeavour to make itself a convenient hole in which to become a

chrysalis. The female larva digs a hole exactly her own size, but the

male makes one as long again as himself, so as to allow for the growth of

his horns, which will be about the same length as his body. A knowledge

of this circumstance is indispensable if the result achieved is to be

considered as due to reflection, yet the actual present of the larva

affords it no ground for conjecturing beforehand the condition in which

it will presently find itself.

As regards the second case, ferrets and buzzards fall forthwith upon

blind worms or other non-poisonous snakes, and devour them then and

there. But they exhibit the greatest caution in laying hold of adders,

even though they have never before seen one, and will endeavour first to

bruise their heads, so as to avoid being bitten. As there is nothing in

any other respect alarming in the adder, a conscious knowledge of the

danger of its bite is indispensable, if the conduct above described is to

be referred to conscious deliberation. But this could only have been

acquired through experience, and the possibility of such experience may

be controlled in the case of animals that have been kept in captivity

from their youth up, so that the knowledge displayed can be ascertained

to be independent of experience. On the other hand, both the above

illustrations afford evidence of an unconscious perception of the facts,

and prove the existence of a direct knowledge underivable from any

sensual impression or from consciousness.

This has always been recognised, {113} and has been described under the

words “presentiment” or “foreboding.” These words, however, refer, on

the one hand, only to an unknowable in the future, separated from us by

space, and not to one that is actually present; on the other hand, they

denote only the faint, dull, indefinite echo returned by consciousness to

an invariably distinct state of unconscious knowledge. Hence the word

“presentiment,” which carries with it an idea of faintness and

indistinctness, while, however, it may be easily seen that sentiment

destitute of all, even unconscious, ideas can have no influence upon the

result, for knowledge can only follow upon an idea. A presentiment that

sounds in consonance with our consciousness can indeed, under certain

circumstances, become tolerably definite, so that in the case of man it

can be expressed in thought and language; but experience teaches us that

even among ourselves this is not so when instincts special to the human

race come into play; we see rather that the echo of our unconscious

knowledge which finds its way into our consciousness is so weak that it

manifests itself only in the accompanying feelings or frame of mind, and

represents but an infinitely small fraction of the sum of our sensations.

It is obvious that such a faintly sympathetic consciousness cannot form a

sufficient foundation for a superstructure of conscious deliberation; on

the other hand, conscious deliberation would be unnecessary, inasmuch as

the process of thinking must have been already gone through

unconsciously, for every faint presentiment that obtrudes itself upon our

consciousness is in fact only the consequence of a distinct unconscious

knowledge, and the knowledge with which it is concerned is almost always

an idea of the purpose of some instinctive action, or of one most

intimately connected therewith. Thus, in the case of the stag-beetle,

the purpose consists in the leaving space for the growth of the horns;

the means, in the digging the hole of a sufficient size; and the

unconscious knowledge, in prescience concerning the future development of

the horns.

Lastly, all instinctive actions give us an impression of absolute

security and infallibility. With instinct the will is never hesitating

or weak, as it is when inferences are being drawn consciously. We never

find instinct making mistakes; we cannot, therefore, ascribe a result

which is so invariably precise to such an obscure condition of mind as is

implied when the word presentiment is used; on the contrary, this

absolute certainty is so characteristic a feature of instinctive actions,

that it constitutes almost the only well-marked point of distinction

between these and actions that are done upon reflection. But from this

it must again follow that some principle lies at the root of instinct

other than that which underlies reflective action, and this can only be

looked for in a determination of the will through a process that lies in

the unconscious, {115a} to which this character of unhesitating

infallibility will attach itself in all our future investigations.

Many will be surprised at my ascribing to instinct an unconscious

knowledge, arising out of no sensual impression, and yet invariably

accurate. This, however, is not a consequence of my theory concerning

instinct; it is the foundation on which that theory is based, and is

forced upon us by facts. I must therefore adduce examples. And to give

a name to the unconscious knowledge, which is not acquired through

impression made upon the senses, but which will be found to be in our

possession, though attained without the instrumentality of means, {115b}

I prefer the word “clairvoyance” {115c} to “presentiment,” which, for

reasons already given, will not serve me. This word, therefore, will be

here employed throughout, as above defined.

Let us now consider examples of the instincts of self-preservation,

subsistence, migration, and the continuation of the species. Most

animals know their natural enemies prior to experience of any hostile

designs upon themselves. A flight of young pigeons, even though they

have no old birds with them, will become shy, and will separate from one

another on the approach of a bird of prey. Horses and cattle that come

from countries where there are no lions become unquiet and display alarm

as soon as they are aware that a lion is approaching them in the night.

Horses going along a bridle-path that used to leave the town at the back

of the old dens of the carnivora in the Berlin Zoological Gardens were

often terrified by the propinquity of enemies who were entirely unknown

to them. Sticklebacks will swim composedly among a number of voracious

pike, knowing, as they do, that the pike will not touch them. For if a

pike once by mistake swallows a stickleback, the stickleback will stick

in its throat by reason of the spine it carries upon its back, and the

pike must starve to death without being able to transmit his painful

experience to his descendants. In some countries there are people who by

choice eat dog’s flesh; dogs are invariably savage in the presence of

these persons, as recognising in them enemies at whose hands they may one

day come to harm. This is the more wonderful inasmuch as dog’s fat

applied externally (as when rubbed upon boots) attracts dogs by its

smell. Grant saw a young chimpanzee throw itself into convulsions of

terror at the sight of a large snake; and even among ourselves a Gretchen

can often detect a Mephistopheles. An insect of the genius _bombyx_ will

seize another of the genus _parnopæa_, and kill it wherever it finds it,

without making any subsequent use of the body; but we know that the

last-named insect lies in wait for the eggs of the first, and is

therefore the natural enemy of its race. The phenomenon known to

stockdrivers and shepherds as “das Biesen des Viehes” affords another

example. For when a “dassel” or “bies” fly draws near the herd, the

cattle become unmanageable and run about among one another as though they

were mad, knowing, as they do, that the larvæ from the eggs which the fly

will lay upon them will presently pierce their hides and occasion them

painful sores. These “dassel” flies—which have no sting—closely resemble

another kind of gadfly which has a sting. Nevertheless, this last kind

is little feared by cattle, while the first is so to an inordinate

extent. The laying of the eggs upon the skin is at the time quite

painless, and no ill consequences follow until long afterwards, so that

we cannot suppose the cattle to draw a conscious inference concerning the

connection that exists between the two. I have already spoken of the

foresight shown by ferrets and buzzards in respect of adders; in like

manner a young honey-buzzard, on being shown a wasp for the first time,

immediately devoured it after having squeezed the sting from its body.

No animal, whose instinct has not been vitiated by unnatural habits, will

eat poisonous plants. Even when apes have contracted bad habits through

their having been brought into contact with mankind, they can still be

trusted to show us whether certain fruits found in their native forests

are poisonous or no; for if poisonous fruits are offered them they will

refuse them with loud cries. Every animal will choose for its sustenance

exactly those animal or vegetable substances which agree best with its

digestive organs, without having received any instruction on the matter,

and without testing them beforehand. Even, indeed, though we assume that

the power of distinguishing the different kinds of food is due to sight

and not to smell, it remains none the less mysterious how the animal can

know what it is that will agree with it. Thus the kid which Galen took

prematurely from its mother smelt at all the different kinds of food that

were set before it, but drank only the milk without touching anything

else. The cherry-finch opens a cherry-stone by turning it so that her

beak can hit the part where the two sides join, and does this as much

with the first stone she cracks as with the last. Fitchets, martens, and

weasels make small holes on the opposite sides of an egg which they are

about to suck, so that the air may come in while they are sucking. Not

only do animals know the food that will suit them best, but they find out

the most suitable remedies when they are ill, and constantly form a

correct diagnosis of their malady with a therapeutical knowledge which

they cannot possibly have acquired. Dogs will often eat a great quantity

of grass—particularly couch-grass—when they are unwell, especially after

spring, if they have worms, which thus pass from them entangled in the

grass, or if they want to get fragments of bone from out of their

stomachs. As a purgative they make use of plants that sting. Hens and

pigeons pick lime from walls and pavements if their food does not afford

them lime enough to make their eggshells with. Little children eat chalk

when suffering from acidity of the stomach, and pieces of charcoal if

they are troubled with flatulence. We may observe these same instincts

for certain kinds of food or drugs even among grown-up people, under

circumstances in which their unconscious nature has unusual power; as,

for example, among women when they are pregnant, whose capricious

appetites are probably due to some special condition of the fœtus, which

renders a certain state of the blood desirable. Field-mice bite off the

germs of the corn which they collect together, in order to prevent its

growing during the winter. Some days before the beginning of cold

weather the squirrel is most assiduous in augmenting its store, and then

closes its dwelling. Birds of passage betake themselves to warmer

countries at times when there is still no scarcity of food for them here,

and when the temperature is considerably warmer than it will be when they

return to us. The same holds good of the time when animals begin to

prepare their winter quarters, which beetles constantly do during the

very hottest days of autumn. When swallows and storks find their way

back to their native places over distances of hundreds of miles, and

though the aspect of the country is reversed, we say that this is due to

the acuteness of their perception of locality; but the same cannot be

said of dogs, which, though they have been carried in a bag from one

place to another that they do not know, and have been turned round and

round twenty times over, have still been known to find their way home.

Here we can say no more than that their instinct has conducted them—that

the clairvoyance of the unconscious has allowed them to conjecture their

way. {119a}

Before an early winter, birds of passage collect themselves in

preparation for their flight sooner than usual; but when the winter is

going to be mild, they will either not migrate at all, or travel only a

small distance southward. When a hard winter is coming, tortoises will

make their burrows deeper. If wild geese, cranes, etc., soon return from

the countries to which they had betaken themselves at the beginning of

spring, it is a sign that a hot and dry summer is about to ensue in those

countries, and that the drought will prevent their being able to rear

their young. In years of flood, beavers construct their dwellings at a

higher level than usual, and shortly before an inundation the field-mice

in Kamtschatka come out of their holes in large bands. If the summer is

going to be dry, spiders may be seen in May and April, hanging from the

ends of threads several feet in length. If in winter spiders are seen

running about much, fighting with one another and preparing new webs,

there will be cold weather within the next nine days, or from that to

twelve: when they again hide themselves there will be a thaw. I have no

doubt that much of this power of prophesying the weather is due to a

perception of certain atmospheric conditions which escape ourselves, but

this perception can only have relation to a certain actual and now

present condition of the weather; and what can the impression made by

this have to do with their idea of the weather that will ensue? No one

will ascribe to animals a power of prognosticating the weather months

beforehand by means of inferences drawn logically from a series of

observations, {119b} to the extent of being able to foretell floods. It

is far more probable that the power of perceiving subtle differences of

actual atmospheric condition is nothing more than the sensual perception

which acts as motive—for a motive must assuredly be always present—when

an instinct comes into operation. It continues to hold good, therefore,

that the power of foreseeing the weather is a case of unconscious

clairvoyance, of which the stork which takes its departure for the south

four weeks earlier than usual knows no more than does the stag when

before a cold winter he grows himself a thicker pelt than is his wont.

On the one hand, animals have present in their consciousness a perception

of the actual state of the weather; on the other, their ensuing action is

precisely such as it would be if the idea present with them was that of

the weather that is about to come. This they cannot consciously have;

the only natural intermediate link, therefore, between their conscious

knowledge and their action is supplied by unconscious idea, which,

however, is always accurately prescient, inasmuch as it contains

something which is neither given directly to the animal through sensual

perception, nor can be deduced inferentially through the understanding.

Most wonderful of all are the instincts connected with the continuation

of the species. The males always find out the females of their own kind,

but certainly not solely through their resemblance to themselves. With

many animals, as, for example, parasitic crabs, the sexes so little

resemble one another that the male would be more likely to seek a mate

from the females of a thousand other species than from his own. Certain

butterflies are polymorphic, and not only do the males and females of the

same species differ, but the females present two distinct forms, one of

which as a general rule mimics the outward appearance of a distant but

highly valued species; yet the males will pair only with the females of

their own kind, and not with the strangers, though these may be very

likely much more like the males themselves. Among the insect species of

the _strepsiptera_, the female is a shapeless worm which lives its whole

life long in the hind body of a wasp; its head, which is of the shape of

a lentil, protrudes between two of the belly rings of the wasp, the rest

of the body being inside. The male, which only lives for a few hours,

and resembles a moth, nevertheless recognises his mate in spite of these

adverse circumstances, and fecundates her.

Before any experience of parturition, the knowledge that it is

approaching drives all mammals into solitude, and bids them prepare a

nest for their young in a hole or in some other place of shelter. The

bird builds her nest as soon as she feels the eggs coming to maturity

within her. Snails, land-crabs, tree-frogs, and toads, all of them

ordinarily dwellers upon land, now betake themselves to the water;

sea-tortoises go on shore, and many saltwater fishes come up into the

rivers in order to lay their eggs where they can alone find the

requisites for their development. Insects lay their eggs in the most

varied kinds of situations,—in sand, on leaves, under the hides and horny

substances of other animals; they often select the spot where the larva

will be able most readily to find its future sustenance, as in autumn

upon the trees that will open first in the coming spring, or in spring

upon the blossoms that will first bear fruit in autumn, or in the insides

of those caterpillars which will soonest as chrysalides provide the

parasitic larva at once with food and with protection. Other insects

select the sites from which they will first get forwarded to the

destination best adapted for their development. Thus some horseflies lay

their eggs upon the lips of horses or upon parts where they are

accustomed to lick themselves. The eggs get conveyed hence into the

entrails, the proper place for their development,—and are excreted upon

their arrival at maturity. The flies that infest cattle know so well how

to select the most vigorous and healthiest beasts, that cattle-dealers

and tanners place entire dependence upon them, and prefer those beasts

and hides that are most scarred by maggots. This selection of the best

cattle by the help of these flies is no evidence in support of the

conclusion that the flies possess the power of making experiments

consciously and of reflecting thereupon, even though the men whose trade

it is to do this recognise them as their masters. The solitary wasp

makes a hole several inches deep in the sand, lays her egg, and packs

along with it a number of green maggots that have no legs, and which,

being on the point of becoming chrysalides, are well nourished and able

to go a long time without food; she packs these maggots so closely

together that they cannot move nor turn into chrysalides, and just enough

of them to support the larva until it becomes a chrysalis. A kind of bug

(_cerceris bupresticida_), which itself lives only upon pollen, lays her

eggs in an underground cell, and with each one of them she deposits three

beetles, which she has lain in wait for and captured when they were still

weak through having only just left off being chrysalides. She kills

these beetles, and appears to smear them with a fluid whereby she

preserves them fresh and suitable for food. Many kinds of wasps open the

cells in which their larvæ are confined when these must have consumed the

provision that was left with them. They supply them with more food, and

again close the cell. Ants, again, hit always upon exactly the right

moment for opening the cocoons in which their larvæ are confined and for

setting them free, the larva being unable to do this for itself. Yet the

life of only a few kinds of insects lasts longer than a single breeding

season. What then can they know about the contents of their eggs and the

fittest place for their development? What can they know about the kind

of food the larva will want when it leaves the egg—a food so different

from their own? What, again, can they know about the quantity of food

that will be necessary? How much of all this at least can they know

consciously? Yet their actions, the pains they take, and the importance

they evidently attach to these matters, prove that they have a

foreknowledge of the future: this knowledge therefore can only be an

unconscious clairvoyance. For clairvoyance it must certainly be that

inspires the will of an animal to open cells and cocoons at the very

moment that the larva is either ready for more food or fit for leaving

the cocoon. The eggs of the cuckoo do not take only from two to three

days to mature in her ovaries, as those of most birds do, but require

from eleven to twelve; the cuckoo, therefore, cannot sit upon her own

eggs, for her first egg would be spoiled before the last was laid. She

therefore lays in other birds’ nests—of course laying each egg in a

different nest. But in order that the birds may not perceive her egg to

be a stranger and turn it out of the nest, not only does she lay an egg

much smaller than might be expected from a bird of her size (for she only

finds her opportunity among small birds), but, as already said, she

imitates the other eggs in the nest she has selected with surprising

accuracy in respect both of colour and marking. As the cuckoo chooses

the nest some days beforehand, it may be thought, if the nest is an open

one, that the cuckoo looks upon the colour of the eggs within it while

her own is in process of maturing inside her, and that it is thus her egg

comes to assume the colour of the others; but this explanation will not

hold good for nests that are made in the holes of trees, as that of

_sylvia phænicurus_, or which are oven-shaped with a narrow entrance, as

with _sylvia rufa_. In these cases the cuckoo can neither slip in nor

look in, and must therefore lay her egg outside the nest and push it

inside with her beak; she can therefore have no means of perceiving

through her senses what the eggs already in the nest are like. If, then,

in spite of all this, her egg closely resembles the others, this can only

have come about through an unconscious clairvoyance which directs the

process that goes on within the ovary in respect of colour and marking.

An important argument in support of the existence of a clairvoyance in

the instincts of animals is to be found in the series of facts which

testify to the existence of a like clairvoyance, under certain

circumstances, even among human beings, while the self-curative instincts

of children and of pregnant women have been already mentioned. Here,

however, {124} in correspondence with the higher stage of development

which human consciousness has attained, a stronger echo of the

unconscious clairvoyance commonly resounds within consciousness itself,

and this is represented by a more or less definite presentiment of the

consequences that will ensue. It is also in accord with the greater

independence of the human intellect that this kind of presentiment is not

felt exclusively immediately before the carrying out of an action, but is

occasionally disconnected from the condition that an action has to be

performed immediately, and displays itself simply as an idea

independently of conscious will, provided only that the matter concerning

which the presentiment is felt is one which in a high degree concerns the

will of the person who feels it. In the intervals of an intermittent

fever or of other illness, it not unfrequently happens that sick persons

can accurately foretell the day of an approaching attack and how long it

will last. The same thing occurs almost invariably in the case of

spontaneous, and generally in that of artificial, somnambulism; certainly

the Pythia, as is well known, used to announce the date of her next

ecstatic state. In like manner the curative instinct displays itself in

somnambulists, and they have been known to select remedies that have been

no less remarkable for the success attending their employment than for

the completeness with which they have run counter to received

professional opinion. The indication of medicinal remedies is the only

use which respectable electro-biologists will make of the half-sleeping,

half-waking condition of those whom they are influencing. “People in

perfectly sound health have been known, before childbirth or at the

commencement of an illness, to predict accurately their own approaching

death. The accomplishment of their predictions can hardly be explained

as the result of mere chance, for if this were all, the prophecy should

fail at least as often as not, whereas the reverse is actually the case.

Many of these persons neither desire death nor fear it, so that the

result cannot be ascribed to imagination.” So writes the celebrated

physiologist, Burdach, from whose chapter on presentiment in his work

“Bhicke in’s Leben” a great part of my most striking examples is taken.

This presentiment of deaths, which is the exception among men, is quite

common with animals, even though they do not know nor understand what

death is. When they become aware that their end is approaching, they

steal away to outlying and solitary places. This is why in cities we so

rarely see the dead body or skeleton of a cat. We can only suppose that

the unconscious clairvoyance, which is of essentially the same kind

whether in man or beast, calls forth presentiments of different degrees

of definiteness, so that the cat is driven to withdraw herself through a

mere instinct without knowing why she does so, while in man a definite

perception is awakened of the fact that he is about to die. Not only do

people have presentiments concerning their own death, but there are many

instances on record in which they have become aware of that of those near

and dear to them, the dying person having appeared in a dream to friend

or wife or husband. Stories to this effect prevail among all nations,

and unquestionably contain much truth. Closely connected with this is

the power of second sight, which existed formerly in Scotland, and still

does so in the Danish islands. This power enables certain people without

any ecstasy, but simply through their keener perception, to foresee

coming events, or to tell what is going on in foreign countries on

matters in which they are deeply interested, such as deaths, battles,

conflagrations (Swedenborg foretold the burning of Stockholm), the

arrival or the doings of friends who are at a distance. With many

persons this clairvoyance is confined to a knowledge of the death of

their acquaintances or fellow-townspeople. There have been a great many

instances of such death-prophetesses, and, what is most important, some

cases have been verified in courts of law. I may say, in passing, that

this power of second sight is found in persons who are in ecstatic

states, in the spontaneous or artificially induced somnambulism of the

higher kinds of waking dreams, as well as in lucid moments before death.

These prophetic glimpses, by which the clairvoyance of the unconscious

reveals itself to consciousness, {126} are commonly obscure because in

the brain they must assume a form perceptible by the senses, whereas the

unconscious idea can have nothing to do with any form of sensual

impression: it is for this reason that humours, dreams, and the

hallucinations of sick persons can so easily have a false signification

attached to them. The chances of error and self-deception that arise

from this source, the ease with which people may be deceived

intentionally, and the mischief which, as a general rule, attends a

knowledge of the future, these considerations place beyond all doubt the

practical unwisdom of attempts to arrive at certainty concerning the

future. This, however, cannot affect the weight which in theory should

be attached to phenomena of this kind, and must not prevent us from

recognising the positive existence of the clairvoyance whose existence I

am maintaining, though it is often hidden under a chaos of madness and

imposture.

The materialistic and rationalistic tendencies of the present day lead

most people either to deny facts of this kind _in toto_, or to ignore

them, inasmuch as they are inexplicable from a materialistic standpoint,

and cannot be established by the inductive or experimental method—as

though this last were not equally impossible in the case of morals,

social science, and politics. A mind of any candour will only be able to

deny the truths of this entire class of phenomena so long as it remains

in ignorance of the facts that have been related concerning them; but,

again, a continuance in this ignorance can only arise from unwillingness

to be convinced. I am satisfied that many of those who deny all human

power of divination would come to another, and, to say the least, more

cautious conclusion if they would be at the pains of further

investigation; and I hold that no one, even at the present day, need be

ashamed of joining in with an opinion which was maintained by all the

great spirits of antiquity except Epicurus—an opinion whose possible

truth hardly one of our best modern philosophers has ventured to

contravene, and which the champions of German enlightenment were so

little disposed to relegate to the domain of old wives’ tales, that

Goethe furnishes us with an example of second sight that fell within his

own experience, and confirms it down to its minutest details.

Although I am far from believing that the kind of phenomena above

referred to form in themselves a proper foundation for a superstructure

of scientific demonstration, I nevertheless find them valuable as a

completion and further confirmation of the series of phenomena presented

to us by the clairvoyance which we observe in human and animal instinct.

Even though they only continue this series {128} through the echo that is

awakened within our consciousness, they as powerfully support the account

which instinctive actions give concerning their own nature, as they are

themselves supported by the analogy they present to the clairvoyance

observable in instinct. This, then, as well as my desire not to lose an

opportunity of protesting against a modern prejudice, must stand as my

reason for having allowed myself to refer, in a scientific work, to a

class of phenomena which has fallen at present into so much discredit.

I will conclude with a few words upon a special kind of instinct which

has a very instructive bearing upon the subject generally, and shows how

impossible it is to evade the supposition of an unconscious clairvoyance

on the part of instinct. In the examples adduced hitherto, the action of

each individual has been done on the individual’s own behalf, except in

the case of instincts connected with the continuation of the species,

where the action benefits others—that is to say, the offspring of the

creature performing it.

We must now examine the cases in which a solidarity of instinct is found

to exist between several individuals, so that, on the one hand, the

action of each redounds to the common welfare, and, on the other, it

becomes possible for a useful purpose to be achieved through the

harmonious association of individual workers. This community of instinct

exists also among the higher animals, but here it is harder to

distinguish from associations originating through conscious will,

inasmuch as speech supplies the means of a more perfect

intercommunication of aim and plan. We shall, however, definitely

recognise {129} this general effect of a universal instinct in the origin

of speech and in the great political and social movements in the history

of the world. Here we are concerned only with the simplest and most

definite examples that can be found anywhere, and therefore we will deal

in preference with the lower animals, among which, in the absence of

voice, the means of communicating thought, mimicry, and physiognomy, are

so imperfect that the harmony and interconnection of the individual

actions cannot in its main points be ascribed to an understanding arrived

at through speech. Huber observed that when a new comb was being

constructed a number of the largest working-bees, that were full of

honey, took no part in the ordinary business of the others, but remained

perfectly aloof. Twenty-four hours afterwards small plates of wax had

formed under their bellies. The bee drew these off with her hind-feet,

masticated them, and made them into a band. The small plates of wax thus

prepared were then glued to the roof of the hive one on the top of the

other. When one of the bees of this kind had used up her plates of wax,

another followed her and carried the same work forward in the same way.

A thin rough vertical wall, half a line in thickness and fastened to the

sides of the hive, was thus constructed. On this, one of the smaller

working-bees whose belly was empty came, and after surveying the wall,

made a flat half-oval excavation in the middle of one of its sides; she

piled up the wax thus excavated round the edge of the excavation. After

a short time she was relieved by another like herself, till more than

twenty followed one another in this way. Meanwhile another bee began to

make a similar hollow on the other side of the wall, but corresponding

only with the rim of the excavation on this side. Presently another bee

began a second hollow upon the same side, each bee being continually

relieved by others. Other bees kept coming up and bringing under their

bellies plates of wax, with which they heightened the edge of the small

wall of wax. In this, new bees were constantly excavating the ground for

more cells, while others proceeded by degrees to bring those already

begun into a perfectly symmetrical shape, and at the same time continued

building up the prismatic walls between them. Thus the bees worked on

opposite sides of the wall of wax, always on the same plan and in the

closest correspondence with those upon the other side, until eventually

the cells on both sides were completed in all their wonderful regularity

and harmony of arrangement, not merely as regards those standing side by

side, but also as regards those which were upon the other side of their

pyramidal base.

Let the reader consider how animals that are accustomed to confer

together, by speech or otherwise, concerning designs which they may be

pursuing in common, will wrangle with thousandfold diversity of opinion;

let him reflect how often something has to be undone, destroyed, and done

over again; how at one time too many hands come forward, and at another

too few; what running to and fro there is before each has found his right

place; how often too many, and again too few, present themselves for a

relief gang; and how we find all this in the concerted works of men, who

stand so far higher than bees in the scale of organisation. We see

nothing of the kind among bees. A survey of their operations leaves

rather the impression upon us as though an invisible master-builder had

prearranged a scheme of action for the entire community, and had

impressed it upon each individual member, as though each class of workers

had learnt their appointed work by heart, knew their places and the

numbers in which they should relieve each other, and were informed

instantaneously by a secret signal of the moment when their action was

wanted. This, however, is exactly the manner in which an instinct works;

and as the intention of the entire community is instinctively present in

the unconscious clairvoyance {131a} of each individual bee, so the

possession of this common instinct impels each one of them to the

discharge of her special duties when the right moment has arrived. It is

only thus that the wonderful tranquillity and order which we observe

could be attained. What we are to think concerning this common instinct

must be reserved for explanation later on, but the possibility of its

existence is already evident, inasmuch {131b} as each individual has an

unconscious insight concerning the plan proposed to itself by the

community, and also concerning the means immediately to be adopted

through concerted action—of which, however, only the part requiring his

own co-operation is present in the consciousness of each. Thus, for

example, the larva of the bee itself spins the silky chamber in which it

is to become a chrysalis, but other bees must close it with its lid of

wax. The purpose of there being a chamber in which the larva can become

a chrysalis must be present in the minds of each of these two parties to

the transaction, but neither of them acts under the influence of

conscious will, except in regard to his own particular department. I

have already mentioned the fact that the larva, after its metamorphosis,

must be freed from its cell by other bees, and have told how the

working-bees in autumn kill the drones, so that they may not have to feed

a number of useless mouths throughout the winter, and how they only spare

them when they are wanted in order to fecundate a new queen.

Furthermore, the working-bees build cells in which the eggs laid by the

queen may come to maturity, and, as a general rule, make just as many

chambers as the queen lays eggs; they make these, moreover, in the same

order as that in which the queen lays her eggs, namely, first for the

working-bees, then for the drones, and lastly for the queens. In the

polity of the bees, the working and the sexual capacities, which were

once united, are now personified in three distinct kinds of individual,

and these combine with an inner, unconscious, spiritual union, so as to

form a single body politic, as the organs of a living body combine to

form the body itself.

In this chapter, therefore, we have arrived at the following

conclusions:—

Instinct is not the result of conscious deliberation; {132} it is not a

consequence of bodily organisation; it is not a mere result of a

mechanism which lies in the organisation of the brain; it is not the

operation of dead mechanism, glued on, as it were, to the soul, and

foreign to its inmost essence; but it is the spontaneous action of the

individual, springing from his most essential nature and character. The

purpose to which any particular kind of instinctive action is subservient

is not the purpose of a soul standing outside the individual and near

akin to Providence—a purpose once for all thought out, and now become a

matter of necessity to the individual, so that he can act in no other

way, though it is engrafted into his nature from without, and not natural

to it. The purpose of the instinct is in each individual case thought

out and willed unconsciously by the individual, and afterwards the choice

of means adapted to each particular case is arrived at unconsciously. A

knowledge of the purpose is often absolutely unattainable {133} by

conscious knowledge through sensual perception. Then does the

peculiarity of the unconscious display itself in the clairvoyance of

which consciousness perceives partly only a faint and dull, and partly,

as in the case of man, a more or less definite echo by way of sentiment,

whereas the instinctive action itself—the carrying out of the means

necessary for the achievement of the unconscious purpose—falls always

more clearly within consciousness, inasmuch as due performance of what is

necessary would be otherwise impossible. Finally, the clairvoyance makes

itself perceived in the concerted action of several individuals combining

to carry out a common but unconscious purpose.

Up to this point we have encountered clairvoyance as a fact which we

observe but cannot explain, and the reader may say that he prefers to

take his stand here, and be content with regarding instinct simply as a

matter of fact, the explanation of which is at present beyond our reach.

Against this it must be urged, firstly, that clairvoyance is not confined

to instinct, but is found also in man; secondly, that clairvoyance is by

no means present in all instincts, and that therefore our experience

shows us clairvoyance and instinct as two distinct things—clairvoyance

being of great use in explaining instinct, but instinct serving nothing

to explain clairvoyance; thirdly and lastly, that the clairvoyance of the

individual will not continue to be so incomprehensible to us, but will be

perfectly well explained in the further course of our investigation,

while we must give up all hope of explaining instinct in any other way.

The conception we have thus arrived at enables us to regard instinct as

the innermost kernel, so to speak, of every living being. That this is

actually the case is shown by the instincts of self-preservation and of

the continuation of the species which we observe throughout creation, and

by the heroic self-abandonment with which the individual will sacrifice

welfare, and even life, at the bidding of instinct. We see this when we

think of the caterpillar, and how she repairs her cocoon until she yields

to exhaustion; of the bird, and how she will lay herself to death; of the

disquiet and grief displayed by all migratory animals if they are

prevented from migrating. A captive cuckoo will always die at the

approach of winter through despair at being unable to fly away; so will

the vineyard snail if it is hindered of its winter sleep. The weakest

mother will encounter an enemy far surpassing her in strength, and suffer

death cheerfully for her offspring’s sake. Every year we see fresh cases

of people who have been unfortunate going mad or committing suicide.

Women who have survived the Cæsarian operation allow themselves so little

to be deterred from further childbearing through fear of this frightful

and generally fatal operation, that they will undergo it no less than

three times. Can we suppose that what so closely resembles demoniacal

possession can have come about through something engrafted on to the soul

as a mechanism foreign to its inner nature, {135} or through conscious

deliberation which adheres always to a bare egoism, and is utterly

incapable of such self-sacrifice for the sake of offspring as is

displayed by the procreative and maternal instincts?

We have now, finally, to consider how it arises that the instincts of any

animal species are so similar within the limits of that species—a

circumstance which has not a little contributed to the

engrafted-mechanism theory. But it is plain that like causes will be

followed by like effects; and this should afford sufficient explanation.

The bodily mechanism, for example, of all the individuals of a species is

alike; so again are their capabilities and the outcomes of their

conscious intelligence—though this, indeed, is not the case with man, nor

in some measure even with the highest animals; and it is through this

want of uniformity that there is such a thing as individuality. The

external conditions of all the individuals of a species are also

tolerably similar, and when they differ essentially, the instincts are

likewise different—a fact in support of which no examples are necessary.

From like conditions of mind and body (and this includes like

predispositions of brain and ganglia) and like exterior circumstances,

like desires will follow as a necessary logical consequence. Again, from

like desires and like inward and outward circumstances, a like choice of

means—that is to say, like instincts—must ensue. These last two steps

would not be conceded without restriction if the question were one

involving conscious deliberation, but as these logical consequences are

supposed to follow from the unconscious, which takes the right step

unfailingly without vacillation or delay so long as the premises are

similar, the ensuing desires and the instincts to adopt the means for

their gratification will be similar also.

Thus the view which we have taken concerning instinct explains the very

last point which it may be thought worth while to bring forward in

support of the opinions of our opponents.

I will conclude this chapter with the words of Schelling: “Thoughtful

minds will hold the phenomena of animal instinct to belong to the most

important of all phenomena, and to be the true touchstone of a durable

philosophy.”

Chapter IX

Remarks upon Von Hartmann’s position in regard to instinct.

UNCERTAIN how far the foregoing chapter is not better left without

comment of any kind, I nevertheless think that some of my readers may be

helped by the following extracts from the notes I took while translating.

I will give them as they come, without throwing them into connected form.

* * * * *

Von Hartmann defines instinct as action done with a purpose, but without

consciousness of purpose.

The building of her nest by a bird is an instinctive action; it is done

with a purpose, but it is arbitrary to say that the bird has no knowledge

of that purpose. Some hold that birds when they are building their nest

know as well that they mean to bring up a family in it as a young married

couple do when they build themselves a house. This is the conclusion

which would be come to by a plain person on a _primâ facie_ view of the

facts, and Von Hartmann shows no reason for modifying it.

A better definition of instinct would be that it is inherited knowledge

in respect of certain facts, and of the most suitable manner in which to

deal with them.

* * * * *

Von Hartmann speaks of “a mechanism of brain or mind” contrived by

nature, and again of “a psychical organisation,” as though it were

something distinct from a physical organisation.

We can conceive of such a thing as mechanism of brain, for we have seen

brain and handled it; but until we have seen a mind and handled it, or at

any rate been enabled to draw inferences which will warrant us in

conceiving of it as a material substance apart from bodily substance, we

cannot infer that it has an organisation apart from bodily organisation.

Does Von Hartmann mean that we have two bodies—a body-body, and a

soul-body?

* * * * *

He says that no one will call the action of the spider instinctive in

voiding the fluids from its glands when they are too full. Why not?

* * * * *

He is continually personifying instinct; thus he speaks of the “ends

proposed to itself by the instinct,” of “the blind unconscious purpose of

the instinct,” of “an unconscious purpose constraining the volition of

the bird,” of “each variation and modification of the instinct,” as

though instinct, purpose, and, later on, clairvoyance, were persons, and

not words characterising a certain class of actions. The ends are

proposed to itself by the animal, not by the instinct. Nothing but

mischief can come of a mode of expression which does not keep this

clearly in view.

* * * * *

It must not be supposed that the same cuckoo is in the habit of laying in

the nests of several different species, and of changing the colour of her

eggs according to that of the eggs of the bird in whose nest she lays. I

have inquired from Mr. R. Bowdler Sharpe of the ornithological department

at the British Museum, who kindly gives it me as his opinion that though

cuckoos do imitate the eggs of the species on whom they foist their young

ones, yet one cuckoo will probably lay in the nests of one species also,

and will stick to that species for life. If so, the same race of cuckoos

may impose upon the same species for generations together. The instinct

will even thus remain a very wonderful one, but it is not at all

inconsistent with the theory put forward by Professor Hering and myself.

* * * * *

Returning to the idea of psychical mechanism, he admits that “it is

itself so obscure that we can hardly form any idea concerning it,” {139a}

and then goes on to claim for it that it explains a great many other

things. This must have been the passage which Mr. Sully had in view when

he very justly wrote that Von Hartmann “dogmatically closes the field of

physical inquiry, and takes refuge in a phantom which explains

everything, simply because it is itself incapable of explanation.”

* * * * *

According to Von Hartmann {139b} the unpractised animal manifests its

instinct as perfectly as the practised. This is not the case. The young

animal exhibits marvellous proficiency, but it gains by experience. I

have watched sparrows, which I can hardly doubt to be young ones, spend a

whole month in trying to build their nest, and give it up in the end as

hopeless. I have watched three such cases this spring in a tree not

twenty feet from my own window and on a level with my eye, so that I have

been able to see what was going on at all hours of the day. In each case

the nest was made well and rapidly up to a certain point, and then got

top-heavy and tumbled over, so that little was left on the tree: it was

reconstructed and reconstructed over and over again, always with the same

result, till at last in all three cases the birds gave up in despair. I

believe the older and stronger birds secure the fixed and best sites,

driving the younger birds to the trees, and that the art of building

nests in trees is dying out among house-sparrows.

* * * * *

He declares that instinct is not due to organisation so much as

organisation to instinct. {140} The fact is, that neither can claim

precedence of or pre-eminence over the other. Instinct and organisation

are only mind and body, or mind and matter; and these are not two

separable things, but one and inseparable, with, as it were, two sides;

the one of which is a function of the other. There was never yet either

matter without mind, however low, nor mind, however high, without a

material body of some sort; there can be no change in one without a

corresponding change in the other; neither came before the other; neither

can either cease to change or cease to be; for “to be” is to continue

changing, so that “to be” and “to change” are one.

* * * * *

Whence, he asks, comes the desire to gratify an instinct before

experience of the pleasure that will ensue on gratification? This is a

pertinent question, but it is met by Professor Hering with the answer

that this is due to memory—to the continuation in the germ of vibrations

that were vibrating in the body of the parent, and which, when stimulated

by vibrations of a suitable rhythm, become more and more powerful till

they suffice to set the body in visible action. For my own part I only

venture to maintain that it is due to memory, that is to say, to an

enduring sense on the part of the germ of the action it took when in the

persons of its ancestors, and of the gratification which ensued thereon.

This meets Von Hartmann’s whole difficulty.

* * * * *

The glacier is not snow. It is snow packed tight into a small compass,

and has thus lost all trace of its original form. How incomplete,

however, would be any theory of glacial action which left out of sight

the origin of the glacier in snow! Von Hartmann loses sight of the

origin of instinctive in deliberative actions because the two classes of

action are now in many respects different. His philosophy of the

unconscious fails to consider what is the normal process by means of

which such common actions as we can watch, and whose history we can

follow, have come to be done unconsciously.

* * * * *

He says, {141} “How inconceivable is the supposition of a mechanism, &c.,

&c.; how clear and simple, on the other hand, is the view that there is

an unconscious purpose constraining the volition of the bird to the use

of the fitting means.” Does he mean that there is an actual thing—an

unconscious purpose—something outside the bird, as it were a man, which

lays hold of the bird and makes it do this or that, as a master makes a

servant do his bidding? If so, he again personifies the purpose itself,

and must therefore embody it, or be talking in a manner which plain

people cannot understand. If, on the other hand, he means “how simple is

the view that the bird acts unconsciously,” this is not more simple than

supposing it to act consciously; and what ground has he for supposing

that the bird is unconscious? It is as simple, and as much in accordance

with the facts, to suppose that the bird feels the air to be colder, and

knows that she must warm her eggs if she is to hatch them, as consciously

as a mother knows that she must not expose her new-born infant to the

cold.

* * * * *

On page 99 of this book we find Von Hartmann saying that if it is once

granted that the normal and abnormal manifestations of instinct spring

from a single source, then the objection that the modification is due to

conscious knowledge will be found to be a suicidal one later on, in so

far as it is directed against instinct generally. I understand him to

mean that if we admit instinctive action, and the modifications of that

action which more nearly resemble results of reason, to be actions of the

same ultimate kind differing in degree only, and if we thus attempt to

reduce instinctive action to the prophetic strain arising from old

experience, we shall be obliged to admit that the formation of the embryo

is ultimately due to reflection—which he seems to think is a _reductio ad

absurdum_ of the argument.

Therefore, he concludes, if there is to be only one source, the source

must be unconscious, and not conscious. We reply, that we do not see the

absurdity of the position which we grant we have been driven to. We hold

that the formation of the embryo _is_ ultimately due to reflection and

design.

* * * * *

The writer of an article in the _Times_, April 1, 1880, says that

servants must be taught their calling before they can practise it; but,

in fact, they can only be taught their calling by practising it. So Von

Hartmann says animals must feel the pleasure consequent on gratification

of an instinct before they can be stimulated to act upon the instinct by

a knowledge of the pleasure that will ensue. This sounds logical, but in

practice a little performance and a little teaching—a little sense of

pleasure and a little connection of that pleasure with this or that

practice,—come up simultaneously from something that we cannot see, the

two being so small and so much abreast, that we do not know which is

first, performance or teaching; and, again, action, or pleasure supposed

as coming from the action.

* * * * *

“Geistes-mechanismus” comes as near to “disposition of mind,” or, more

shortly, “disposition,” as so unsatisfactory a word can come to anything.

Yet, if we translate it throughout by “disposition,” we shall see how

little we are being told.

We find on page 114 that “all instinctive actions give us an impression

of absolute security and infallibility”; that “the will is never weak or

hesitating, as it is when inferences are being drawn consciously.” “We

never,” Von Hartmann continues, “find instinct making mistakes.” Passing

over the fact that instinct is again personified, the statement is still

incorrect. Instinctive actions are certainly, as a general rule,

performed with less uncertainty than deliberative ones; this is

explicable by the fact that they have been more often practised, and thus

reduced more completely to a matter of routine; but nothing is more

certain than that animals acting under the guidance of inherited

experience or instinct frequently make mistakes which with further

practice they correct. Von Hartmann has abundantly admitted that the

manner of an instinctive action is often varied in correspondence with

variation in external circumstances. It is impossible to see how this

does not involve both possibility of error and the connection of instinct

with deliberation at one and the same time. The fact is simply this—when

an animal finds itself in a like position with that in which it has

already often done a certain thing in the persons of its forefathers, it

will do this thing well and easily: when it finds the position somewhat,

but not unrecognisably, altered through change either in its own person

or in the circumstances exterior to it, it will vary its action with

greater or less ease according to the nature of the change in the

position: when the position is gravely altered the animal either bungles

or is completely thwarted.

* * * * *

Not only does Von Hartmann suppose that instinct may, and does, involve

knowledge antecedent to, and independent of, experience—an idea as

contrary to the tendency of modern thought as that of spontaneous

generation, with which indeed it is identical though presented in another

shape—but he implies by his frequent use of the word “unmittelbar” that a

result can come about without any cause whatever. So he says, “Um für

die unbewusster Erkenntniss, welche nicht durch sinnliche Wahrnehmung

erworben, _sondern als unmittelbar Besitz_,” &c. {144a} Because he does

not see where the experience can have been gained, he cuts the knot, and

denies that there has been experience. We say, Look more attentively and

you will discover the time and manner in which the experience was gained.

* * * * *

Again, he continually assumes that animals low down in the scale of life

cannot know their own business because they show no sign of knowing ours.

See his remarks on _Saturnia pavonia minor_ (page 107), and elsewhere on

cattle and gadflies. The question is not what can they know, but what

does their action prove to us that they do know. With each species of

animal or plant there is one profession only, and it is hereditary. With

us there are many professions, and they are not hereditary; so that they

cannot become instinctive, as they would otherwise tend to do.

* * * * *

He attempts {144b} to draw a distinction between the causes that have

produced the weapons and working instruments of animals, on the one hand,

and those that lead to the formation of hexagonal cells by bees, &c., on

the other. No such distinction can be justly drawn.

* * * * *

The ghost-stories which Von Hartmann accepts will hardly be accepted by

people of sound judgment. There is one well-marked distinctive feature

between the knowledge manifested by animals when acting instinctively and

the supposed knowledge of seers and clairvoyants. In the first case, the

animal never exhibits knowledge except upon matters concerning which its

race has been conversant for generations; in the second, the seer is

supposed to do so. In the first case, a new feature is invariably

attended with disturbance of the performance and the awakening of

consciousness and deliberation, unless the new matter is too small in

proportion to the remaining features of the case to attract attention, or

unless, though really new, it appears so similar to an old feature as to

be at first mistaken for it; with the second, it is not even professed

that the seer’s ancestors have had long experience upon the matter

concerning which the seer is supposed to have special insight, and I can

imagine no more powerful _à priori_ argument against a belief in such

stories.

* * * * *

Close upon the end of his chapter Von Hartmann touches upon the one

matter which requires consideration. He refers the similarity of

instinct that is observable among all species to the fact that like

causes produce like effects; and I gather, though he does not expressly

say so, that he considers similarity of instinct in successive

generations to be referable to the same cause as similarity of instinct

between all the contemporary members of a species. He thus raises the

one objection against referring the phenomena of heredity to memory which

I think need be gone into with any fulness. I will, however, reserve

this matter for my concluding chapters.

Von Hartmann concludes his chapter with a quotation from Schelling, to

the effect that the phenomena of animal instinct are the true touchstone

of a durable philosophy; by which I suppose it is intended to say that if

a system or theory deals satisfactorily with animal instinct, it will

stand, but not otherwise. I can wish nothing better than that the

philosophy of the unconscious advanced by Von Hartmann be tested by this

standard.

Chapter X

Recapitulation and statement of an objection.

THE true theory of unconscious action, then, is that of Professor Hering,

from whose lecture it is no strained conclusion to gather that he holds

the action of all living beings, from the moment of their conception to

that of their fullest development, to be founded in volition and design,

though these have been so long lost sight of that the work is now carried

on, as it were, departmentally and in due course according to an official

routine which can hardly now be departed from.

This involves the older “Darwinism” and the theory of Lamarck, according

to which the modification of living forms has been effected mainly

through the needs of the living forms themselves, which vary with varying

conditions, the survival of the fittest (which, as I see Mr. H. B.

Baildon has just said, “sometimes comes to mean merely the survival of

the survivors” {146}) being taken almost as a matter of course.

According to this view of evolution, there is a remarkable analogy

between the development of living organs or tools and that of those

organs or tools external to the body which has been so rapid during the

last few thousand years.