Instinct and experience

Preface

IN the summer of 1910 a symposium on the subject of Instinct and Intelligence was held in London at a joint meeting of the Aristotelian and British Psychological Societies and of the Mind Association. Considerable interest in the discussion was shown both in the room in which we met and beyond its walls. The papers then taken as read, and subsequently published in the " British Journal of Psychology," disclose not a little divergence in the sense in which the terms instinctive and intelligent are used, an underlying divergence in the principles on which the proffered interpretations are based, and indications, more or less clear, of yet deeper-seated differences of philosophical foundation.

The questions at issue seem to open out live problems, and problems of wide range. Being under promise to write a short work on some aspect of genetic psychology I thought I might do some service by expanding my own contribution to the symposium, by bringing it into relation with the views expressed by other contributors, by following up the subject in further detail, and especially by giving something like definite form to the doctrine of experience, which has, of late years, been taking shape in my mind, under influences too numerous to admit of detailed citation.

vi INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE

The burden of my contention is that the history of the universe, so far as we are able to read it, is one continuous story, every episode in which is, if one may so phrase it, logically correlated with other relevant episodes. I use the word logically in a broad sense as equivalent to intelligibly, with no finalistic implication. For reasons which I hope to render clear I avoid the terms mechanical or mechanistic, since there is much in the world-story which, though it should be interpreted as logically or intelligibly determinate, involves natural relationships with which neither mechanics nor mechanism, as such, has any concern. The world-story, then, is intelligible and, in that sense, has a logic which we may endeavour to understand. But the story is only given up to date ; we can only found our interpretation on the part that has so far been told ; of its further and future development we can only make forecasts in so far as we can, in some measure, sympathetically identify our own finite and imperfect logic of interpretation with the fuller and more perfect logic of the story we attempt to read, a world-story within which our own life and thought is itself a correlated episode forming part of the story as a whole. Often our powers of prevision are balked. It is true that where we are dealing with repetitive routine, little more is required than a skilled application of our powers of calculation. But in the evolution which supersedes routine we have again and again to confess that we cannot foretell how the world-story will work out in the future. This however, I contend, is not because the inherent development of the story will be lacking in logical coherence ; it is because our imperfect insight and reason fail to grasp the

PREFACE vii

determining factors within the deeper logic of the universe. This deeper logic is what I have elected to term the ground of the world, both as that which is experienced or experienceable, and as the process of experiencing. This is the basis of the uniformity of nature, if by this we mean, not merely repetition da capo of the tune of the past in recurrent routine, but that progressive and unitary development of a harmonious theme, which is true evolution. In claiming for the universe an inner relevance — a unity of concatenation of correlated episodes — I am not, however, concerned to contend that, for our finite understanding, there is nowhere and at no time discoverable irrelevance. World-processes in their detail seem often to have a way of running into blind alleys which are off the line of evolutionary progress ; but even along the main lines of progress since, so far as we can judge, the elimination of irrelevance is a condition of advance in human logic, it may well be that what we call evolution is of the same type. At any rate the development of the world, and of life on its surface, tends consistently to increasing relevance and more closely knit coherence in logical texture. As differentiation and integration proceed the growing complexity involves a type of structure which answers more and more closely to what in our thought is characteristically logical, apparent irrelevance being caught up into a richer relevance within a progressive whole.

Within this developing whole with which experience deals that experience has itself been developed. This involves the presence of those special relationships which are characterized by conscious awareness.

viii INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE

How shall we deal with them ? There they are as a matter of fact ; that no one can deny. They eventually have all the richness and complexity which are abundantly illustrated in human life ; that must be realized to the full. But how are they to be interpreted ? As part of the world-story, the highest outcome of its logic developed ah intra ? Or as alien insertions ab extra> derived from a logic of wholly different source ? I advocate the acceptance of the former alternative.

But what does this imply? It implies that the fully explicit logic of human reason is but a higher development of the scarcely explicit logic of perceptual intelligence ; and that this in turn has its roots deeply embedded in the implicit logic of instinct which, as I define it, is organic behaviour suffused with awareness.

Now granted that we have here genuine evolution as contrasted with the routine repetition which it supersedes, it appears to me that the key-note of the successive steps of progress is that (if I may pursue the logical analogy) there is always more in the conclusion than was contained in the premises. That is what I understand by the progressive synthesis which is characteristic of an evolving universe which we can interpret in rational fashion. It emphasizes, for example, the fact that in natural selection we have not only the elimination of failure ; we have also the synthetic production of success. But I contend that the grounds of the conclusion are always within the logical system of nature, and are not imposed on that system ab extra. That is where I part company with Dr. Driesch's Entelechy, M. Bergson's Vital Impetus, and the Psychic Entity of Mr. McDougall's Animism.

PREFACE ix

And if (carrying things yet one stage further back) conscious experience in the individual organism, as a concrete universal containing its share of the ground of the universe, appears to involve a conclusion carrying more than was present in the merely organic premises of embryological development — that, I urge, is just a fact of world-synthesis to be accepted — that, I claim, is of the same order as the facts which are characteristic of evolution throughout its entire range. If then we ask why this fact should be what it is and as it is, we must surely generalize the question, and ask why evolution should have those characteristics which, by patient research, we find that it does possess ; to which question, as I understand the matter, we can give no answer unless we resort to what I have termed the metaphysics of Source.

Such being in outline my personal orientation towards the intra-mundane philosophy of experience, I have attempted to lead up to a discussion of some of the problems it opens out through a consideration of the nature of instinctive behaviour and its accompanying instinctive experience.

C. LLOYD MORGAN

University of Bristol May, 1 91 2

Chapter I Instinctive Behaviour And Experience

The Biological Approach — The Problem of the Source of the Natural Order excluded from Science — The Moorhen's Dive as an Example of Instinctive Behaviour — Biological Definition of Instinctive Behaviour — Diving differentiated from Swimming and affords Specific Experience — Dependent on Racial Preparation under Biological Evolution — Consciousness at the outset a mere Spectator — Primary and Secondary Meaning — Physiological Sketch of Reflexes concerned in Instinctive Behaviour — Those involving only lower Brain-centres, distinguished from those involving the Cortex— Further Interpretation of Moorhen's Dive — The Earlier Stage of Instinctive Swimming — Are the Movements really such as to afford New Data to Experience ? — Dr. Myers' Contention that a completely New Movement is impossible — Its Logical Results — The Beginning of Experience when the Moorhen is hatched — Previous Experience in the Eggshell may be regarded as practically negligible — The Primary Genesis of Experience in Instinctive Performance — Difficult Philosophical Questions with regard to the Conscious Accompaniments — Broadened Connotation of term Instinctive — Dr. Driesch's definition of Instinct — Dr. Myers' Criticism thereof — Instinctive Performance practically serviceable — Serviceable to what Ends ? — The Guidance of Experience introduces Conditions other than those of Instinctive Performance xii INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE

Chapter II The Relation Of Instinct To Experience

PAGE

Instinctive Behaviour an Organic Heritage — The Experience gained a Condition of Modified Behaviour — Dr. Myers' Identification of Instinct-intelligence — Its Consideration postponed — Some questions of Terminology — Cortical Influence on Lower Brain-centres correlated with Intelligent Modification of Behaviour — Dr. Stout's Criticism — When does Learning by Experience occur? — What are its Characteristics? — Divergence of View — The First and the Second Occasion — The Potential Experiencer — Pre-perception in Instinctive Performance — Mr. McDougall's and Dr. Stout's Doctrine of Inherited Pre-perception — Philosophical Implications postponed — The Nature of Pre-perceptual Meaning — Is its presence necessary for the Interpretation of Instinctive Behaviour— If present, due to Inherited Dispositions within the Cortex — Excluded, therefore, from Instinctive Behaviour as such — If included, Instinctive Behaviour is incipiently voluntary, as in Mr. McDougall's and Dr. Archdall Reid's Definitions of Instinct— As a form of Cortical Spread dim Pre-perception may be accepted as nowise contradictory to the Thesis of this Book— But, as Dr. Stout admits, it is relatively indeterminate— Definiteness the outcome of instinctive Pre-adjustment— Dr. Stout's contention that Intelligence must be present at the Outset of Experience— Process and Product of Experience — Intelligence as Process is what Dr. Stout rightly emphasizes— Some measure of agreement notwithstanding some divergence — Instinctive Endowment and Congenital Capacity for learning —Cortical Processes as correlated with Experience condition the Modifications of the Sub-cortical Processes primarily concerned in Instinctive Behaviour 28

Chapter III

Recapitulation of Position— The Identification of Instinctive Behaviour with Complex and Compound Reflex Action—

CONTENTS xiii

Instinctive Experience correlated with cortical changes conditioned by Instinctive Procedure — Instinctive Experience an Abstract Conception referring to certain Factors of Experience as contradistinguished from the Intelligent Factors — Prof. Sherrington's Researches on Reflex Action — First and Second Grades of Co-ordination — Chief Points of Emphasis — Scratch-reflex of the Dog — The Spinal Animal — Summation of Allied Stimuli — Antagonistic Reflexes — The Common Final Path — In Competition for Use of Final Common Path one Reflex generally prevails — Bearing of this on Instinctive Phenomena — Alternation of Reflexes — Spinal Irradiation and Induction— Further Effective Co-ordination — Influence of Fatigue — Scale of Potency — Nocuous Stimuli generally pre-potent — Constellations of Stimuli give purposive results — The Decerebrate Animal — Activities of Decerebrate Frog ; of the Decerebrate Pigeon ; of the Decerebrate Dog — Observations of Goltz and Prof. Sherrington — Expressions of Emotion— Does the Decerebrate Animal behave instinctively ? — Assumed Conditions of Experience excluded with Removal of Cortex — How is Cortical Control operative? Principles of Integration probably the same throughout Central Nervous System— Dr. Paulow on Transference of sufticient Stimulus — Afferent Inlets and Instinctive Behaviour 54

Chapter IV Hereditary Dispositions And Innate Mental Tendencies

"he Biological Origin of Instinctive Behaviour and its Relation to Consciousness — Is Consciousness as old as or later than Organic Life? — Our Provisional Hypothesis — The Congenital and the Acquired ; their Relations to Heredity — Should Inherited Mental Capacity in definite direction be termed Instinctive? — Rational and Intellectual Instincts of some Authors — Higher Innate Tendencies regarded as Instinctive — Instinct of Mozart, Pascal, Bidder — Suggested Differentiation of Terms Innate and Instinctive — Cortical and Sub-cortical Dispositions — Secondary Meaning and Inherited Re-presentations — Pre-percepti ve Interest and Cortical Spread— Mr. McDougall's Doctrine of Instinct—General riv INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE and Specific (Instinctive) Tendencies — Animistic View involving Teleological Interpretation — Mr. McDougall's " Principal Instincts of Man" — The Relation of Instinct to Emotion— Classes of Instinctive Modes of Behaviour and Experience — Predicates of Inherited Constitution as Logical Subject — Instincts as Unitary Principles — Disposition and Constitution — Danger of regarding Instincts as Faculties- Pugnacity as a Concept, and as a Principle or Force — The Nature of Impulse — The role of the Innate Mental Tendencies — How they run parallel with Instinctive Tendencies — Mr. McDougall's Treatment of the Complex Emotions — Compounds of Elements or Predicates of a Logical Subject? Emotion as a Mode of Experiencing — The Unity of experiencing, and the Multiplicity of Items experienced . 87

Chapter V

The Double Reference of Experience — The Experienced and Experiencing — The Subject as "owning" Experience — Existence of Nature as experienceable postulated — Instinctive Experience simplest and naivest form of Experience — Involves Conscious Relationships, and thus distinguished from Organic Process — The "ed" Reference and the "ing" Reference scarcely differentiated — Conscious Relationships constitutive of World-process and really count — The Limits of the Mental — Are Concepts mental or non-mental? — Policy of Interpretation outlined— Concept of Source or Agency excluded from Science — Natural Processes correlated — The Conditions of Process — Are there Conditions of World-process as a whole?— The Concept of Ground — Constitution of Nature as Ultimate Ground for Science — Example from Crystallization — Process and Product — Pluralistic Products and Monistic View of Process— One World-story— Unity of Concatenation — Perceptual Facts and Universal Concepts — Ideal Constructions as Maps — True so far as useful— Limits of Scientific Prediction— The Beginnings of Crystallization— Could Nature and Properties of Protoplasm be foretold ? — Mechanism and Vitalism as Descriptive Terms —Vital Force and Vital Chemistry— The Concept of Entelechy— Entelechy as Ground and as Source— Is there one

CONTENTS xv

PAGE

Science of Nature ?— Organisms as Historical Beings- Constitution of Nature the Ground of their History — If New Departures frequent in Inorganic World, why not, on the same terms, in the Organic? .126

Chapter VI

[s there a Natural History of Experience ? — Self-consciousness as terminus ad quern and as terminus a quo — The Relation of History to Science — General Rules only emerge when History repeats itself— The Ground of the Expectations involved — Routine as the Basis of Science — Within what Limits does History repeat itself? — In what Sense is Evolution the Appearance of the New? — The New as only a Re-grouping of the Old — The Characteristics of Routine — Organic Routine and Organic Evolution — Routine and Not- Routine in Experience — The Concept of the Individual — Does Heredity "provide" for both Routine and Evolution? — M. Bergson's Doctrine of Heredity and the Vital Impetus — A Contribution to Metaphysics rather than to Science — M, Bergson and Darwin — M. Bergson's Stress on the Continuity of Process — His Doctrine of Intellectual Snap-shots — All Process of the Vital and Conscious Order — Steps of the Argument — The Antithetical Views of Philosophical Materialists — The Search for Reality — Relationship and its Terms — The Conscious Relationship really counts — Relationships in Transverse Section — The Snap-shot "now" of Experience — A Specialized and Selective Relationship — Analogies throughout the Natural Order — Instinctive Experience as a Sequence of "nows"; conditioned by Primary Meaning — Secondary Meaning involves Factors of Revival — The Importance of Context — Longitudinal Relationships — Pre-perception and Memory — The Relationships extended in Ideal Construction — Map of Space and Time — M. Bergson's Doctrine of Time and Memory — The Distinction between the "eds" and the " ing" of Experience, as the Basis of much of M. Bergson's Philosophy — Can we make the "ing" an "ed"? 163 xvi INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE

Chapter VII Pag]

Sydney Smith on the Contrast between Instinct and Reason — M. Bergson's Doctrine of Instinct and Intelligence as Different Forms of Knowledge— The Relation of Instinct to Consciousness — Consciousness as Annulled — Relation to old Physiological "Views on Automatism — The Insinuation of Life as Pure Memory — The Brain as a Switchboard, not in any sense a Storehouse of Memories — Pure Memory as Spirit directs the Physiological Impulses in the Nervous System by the insertion of Choice — What we enjoy as Consciousness is the Glow of Unconscious Spirit traversing Unconscious Brain-matter — Instinct and Organization — Their Relation to Pure Memory — M. Bergson's View of the Relation of Instinct to Intelligence— Divergent Paths in Arthropods and Vertebrates as Choice of Vital Impetus — Must attempt to deal with M. Bergson's Views sympathetically — Is the Absence of Learning a Criterion of Instinct ? — Both Instinct and Intelligence involve Innate Knowledge; the one of Things and Matter, the other of Relation and Form— Seeking and finding through Instinct and Intelligence — The Nature of Instinctive Knowledge in the Insect — Instinct as Sympathy, but the Interpretation not Scientific — M. Bergson's Aim avowedly Philosophical — His Appeal to Experience as experienczV^— Instinct, Intuition, and Sympathy— Intuition, Invention, and Application— The Kernel of M. Bergson's Doctrine of Instinct — Relation of the Doctrine to that here advocated — In all Experience the "ing" and the "eds" correlative; but with Variations of Emphasis — The Detachment of Intellectual Interpretation

— M. Bergson's Method of Hypostatising the Results of Analysis — The Home of Motion and Duration — How do we get at Movement and Process outside us— The r61e of Sympathy and of Empathy— M. Bergson's Stress on the Inward Direction of Instinct and Sympathy towards Process— Dr. Myers reverses the Direction

— His Views on the Relation of Instinct and Intelligence 204

CONTENTS xvii

Chapter VIII Finalism And Mechanism : Body And Mind

PAGB

Finalism and Correlated Routine— Organic Tunes played da capo — Entelechy and Variations or Mutations — Finalism in Human Life as Purposeful — Similar Ends reached through Different Means—Stability of Constitution — The Sense in which the Present is conditioned by the Future — Universal Finalism — Mechanism the Antithesis to Finalism — Technical Details of a Mechanical Ideal Construction — Mechanistic Interpretation in Terms of Physics and Chemistry— Organic Phenomena need a further Formula — Psychological Relationships correlated but not identical with Physiological — Need we introduce Source ? — Ambiguities to be avoided — Mechanistic Philosophy and Universal Correlation — Conscious Relationships as Pre-perceptive really count — One Natural Order or two ? — Is Inter-action inconceivable ? — Where lies the Mystery ? — The Doctrine of Parallelism — What is to be expected from the Appeal to Physiology ? — The Contention that Different Psychical States may be correlated with the same Cerebral States — Parallelism in Terms of the "ing" and the "eds" of experience — Not two Processes, but one, in merging Unity with Different Relationships — Dr. Driesch's " Intra-psychical Series " — Has nothing to do with the Brain — Mr. McDougall's Argument from "Meaning" — No Unitary Neural Process correlated with Meaning — His Thesis in Terms of "ing" and "eds" — His Psychic Entity an Hypostatized Abstraction — Our Interpretation of the Facts of Meaning — Organic Total Reaction — Retinal Rivalry — Divergent Interpretations of Biological Facts — Return to Finalism and Mechanism — The Doctrine of Panpsychism — Is all Process Conscious or Quasi-conscious? — The Emphasis on Pre-perception — In any case Nature the Product of Unitary Process 241

Index 293

Chapter I Instinctive Behaviour And Experience

I PROPOSE to approach the problems of experience through the avenue of biology. My aim is to treat the phenomena of conscious existence as a naturalist treats the phenomena of organic life. I shall therefore begin with instinctive behaviour and shall endeavour to give some account of the nature of the instinctive experience which, as I believe, accompanies it. In this way we shall get some idea of what I conceive to be the beginnings of experience in the individual organism.

A consideration of the criticisms to which such a method of treatment, and its results, have been subjected will lead to some qualification of the hypothesis at first barely outlined, and will open up further problems with regard to the nature and development of experience. We shall find as we proceed that the term instinctive is used by different writers with rather wide divergence of meaning. It will become evident that men of weight, like Dr. Titchener and Dr. Thorndike in America,

M. Bergson in France, Dr. Driesch and Father Wasmann in Germany, Dr. Stout, Mr. McDougall, and Dr. C. S. Myers in England, employ the term with differing connotation and denotation. Minor differences are found among writers whose approach like my own is from the side of biology. Under these circumstances some attempt to correlate divergent opinions should be helpful to further progress. Such an attempt might be made by one who, having no particular view of his own to support, could undertake the task with wholly unprejudiced judgment. That in my case is impossible. I have already reached conclusions of my own. If, however, I can succeed in giving a fair and just account of the teaching of those from whom I differ, and can make clear the grounds of my dissent, the fact that I write as an advocate, rather than one who is fitted to be judge and arbiter, may perhaps conduce to that vitality of treatment which is one of the advantages of a conflict of views.

But as we follow up the relation of instinct to other modes and phases of the life of experience we shall find that wider and wider issues are brought into the field of our consideration. It is part of my aim to deal with these in the spirit of one who has not only an interpretation of instinct to formulate, but also a more comprehensive scientific doctrine to advocate — a doctrine of the relation of experience to the world as experienceable. For the further we go the more clearly shall we see that a thinker's conclusions with regard to the nature of instinct are intimately connected with his philosophical attitude towards large and far-reaching world-problems. I propose to discuss these problems from the point of view of one who comes to them from the scientific side, so far as the space at my command permits, and so far as such discussion is calculated to throw light on the nature and development of experience.

Under the stimulating influence of M. Bergson the more philosophical aspect of life-problems has recently come into special prominence. Through his powerful advocacy, through the teaching of Dr. Driesch, and more recently through the skilfully marshalled arguments of Mr. McDougall — to mention no other names — the pendulum of opinion has acquired new impetus in the vitalistic direction of its swing. My own position will, I trust, be made sufficiently clear in the sequel. I shall urge that there is a tendency to introduce into a scientific discussion of such problems concepts which I regard as non-scientific.

The aim of science, I conceive, is to develop a generalized interpretation of natural processes in all their relationships, including the conscious relationships which go to the synthetic formation of experience. Science does not, however, attempt to give any answer — not even the hint of an answer — to the further question : — What is the Source of the natural processes so interpreted? That I conceive to be a metaphysical question. It opens up issues which are intimately connected with Theology and with Religion. With such metaphysical problems I do not attempt to deal in this book. Without for one moment denying their vital human interest and their supreme importance, I wish at the outset to exclude them altogether from any place in a scientific interpretation of natural processes. My only concern with them will be an emphatic, and perhaps often repeated, denial of their right of entry into a scientific universe of discourse, as I define the term scientific. It may, of course, be said that, by doing this, one leaves the scheme of science quite unexplained. Not only the mode of origin of the world in which we live, but its final end and purpose are thus wholly disregarded. Exactly so ! These are just the questions which should be left over for metaphysical treatment. Physics, chemistry, astronomy, geology, mineralogy — all the sciences which deal with the inorganic world — have long ago recognized this. Some day biology and psychology will do so with equal candour and to their lasting profit.

Some years ago 1 I had under observation two young moorhens or waterhens which I had hatched in an incubator and watched from day to day, almost from hour to hour, with some care. One of these, about nine weeks old, was swimming in a pool at the bend of a stream in Yorkshire. A vigorous roughhaired puppy, highly charged with canine vitality, ran down from the neighbouring farm, barking and gambolling ; and from the bank he made an awkward feint towards the young bird. In a moment the moorhen dived, disappeared from view, and soon partially reappeared, his head just peeping above the water beneath the overhanging bank. Now this was the first time the bird had dived. I had repeatedly

1 Cf. " Habit and Instinct," p. 64. " British Journal of Psychology," vol. iii., pp. 11 and 221. Some passages which have appeared in papers contributed to this Journal are here utilized.

endeavoured to elicit this characteristic piece of behaviour, but had failed. My friend Mr. F. A. Knight tells me that he has seen a moor-chick, not more than a day old, dive under a log of wood when suddenly disturbed. I have seen them dive nearly as early in life. Under unnatural conditions, however, in a large bath, and under natural conditions in the Yorkshire stream, do what I would in my efforts to coax or to frighten the young bird, I had never been able to make him dive. But now at last that blundering puppy succeeded, where I had so often failed. And when this characteristic piece of behaviour came upon my little friend — came upon him suddenly and without warning — his dive was absolutely true to type.

I have elsewhere * advocated the acceptance of a definition of instinctive behaviour as that which is, on its first occurrence, independent of prior experience ; which tends to the well-being of the individual and the preservation of the race ; which is similarly performed by all the members of the same more or less restricted group of animals ; and which may be subject to subsequent modification under the guidance of experience. Such behaviour is, I conceive, a more or less complex organic or biological response to a more or less complex group of stimuli of external and internal origin, and it is, as such, wholly dependent on how the organism, and especially the nervous system and brain-centres have been built through heredity, under that mode of racial preparation which we call biological evolution.

How far does the behaviour of the moorhen*

1 '* Animal Behaviour, " p. 71.

when it dives for the first time in its life, conform to this definition? I conceive that it conforms all along the line so long as, but only so long as, we restrict our attention to its specific nature as dive. Qua dive, it is independent of prior diving experience, for there has been no such experience. Of course it may be said that diving involves swimming and that of swimming the moorhen has had abundant experience during two months of active life. That is surely true enough. But to dive is not only to swim, but to swim with a difference. It is adapted to the peculiar circumstances of complete immersion. I do not think that any careful observer will deny that diving is a differentiated form of swimming and that it has specific characters which make it something other than merely swimming under water. The whole poise and set of the body, the position of the head and outstretched neck, the impelling strokes of the legs, are specially adapted to a relatively new mode of progression. There must be a correlated modification of the processes of respiration. The question is whether these and other specific differentiations of behaviour are instinctive in the sense that they are as such independent of prior experience. That they are wholly independent of all previous experience I do not assert. If that were the case it is difficult to understand how they could possibly be incorporated with, and synthetically assimilated to, the experience already gained. But that they provide new factors to be so incorporated and assimilated seems to me to be a conclusion forced upon us by the facts of the case.

The particular and specific form of behaviour exhibited by the moorhen on the occasion of its first dive is, I believe, dependent as such on how the nervous system has been built up under that mode of racial preparation which we call biological evolution. If in further criticism of the view I wish to make clear, it be urged that though perhaps the specific form of the scare-begotten dive-situation is due to the hereditary make-up of the nerve-centres, it is also partly dependent (e.g. in its relation to swimming) on how the nerve-centres have been moulded and modified under previous experience — that is to say in psychological terms, partly dependent on intelligent guidance — I venture to remind my critic that we are endeavouring to disentangle the factors of behaviour ; that all I urge is that an instinctive factor, new to experience, is introduced. I am ready to admit, nay more I am prepared to contend, that, just in so far as the behaviour is dependent on previous experience, we have also the presence of the intelligent factor. In a moorhen two months old instinct and intelligence co-operate. None the less the instinctive and intelligent factors are distinguishable in analysis. What are we to understand by intelligent guidance ? At a later stage of our enquiry I shall endeavour to defend the hypotheses that intelligent guidance is the function of the cerebral cortex with its distinguishing property of consciousness ; that the co-ordination involved in instinctive behaviour, and in the distribution of physiological impulses to the viscera and vascular system, is the primary function of the lower brain-centres ; that, in instinctive behaviour as such, consciousness correlated with processes in the cerebral cortex, is so to speak, a n INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE