Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 6.djvu/77

 AN ATTEMPT AT A PSYCHOLOGY OF INSTINCT. 61 process? In proposing to write upon the psychology of instinct, I have assumed that it is a conscious process : other- wise it would not come within the province of psychology. But protests have been raised against this assumption. What basis is there for such protests, and how have they been answered ? The chief exponent, among psychologists, of the theory that instinct is an unconscious process is Herbert Spencer. He defines instinct as "compound reflex action". "No instinct need ever have been intelligent. In its higher forms it is probably accompanied by a rudimentary consciousness, but this is an effect of the growing complexity of the instinct." l Wundt remarks that Spencer's theory " accounts for the material which the animal has at its disposal, but not for the form which is the real result of its work. That the caterpillar secretes silk, and the bee wax, is just as much a matter of physical necessity as the emission of any other secretion. But that these substances are worked up in such definite and artistic forms is altogether inexplicable from the facts of physical organisation." 2 And again : ' ' The reflex theory assumes that the sucking movements of the new-born mammal are not only involuntary, bat unconscious. It is hardly a theory that any one would hold, who had ever really seen the movements of a hungry infant. If emotional ex- pressions have any significance at all, the infant's move- ments can only be interpreted as psychically conditioned actions, i.e., manifestations of impulse." 3 Romanes also criticises Spencer's theory, and maintains with Wundt that instinct must be conscious. " Instinct is reflex action into which there is imported an element of consciousness." 4 These two writers give us three classes of facts which require the assumption of consciousness in instinct. (1) Instinctive actions are often accommodated by the individual to changes in external circumstances. (2) They do not follow immediately upon definite stimuli, but depend also upon the disposition of the animal. (3) In the higher animals, at least, they are accompanied by unmistakable expression of emotion. Romanes admits that there is difficulty in determining 1 Spencer's Principles of Psychology, chap, xii., sec. 194. 2 Wundt's Lectures on Human and Animal Psychology, tr., p. 392. 4 Mental Evolution in Animals, p. 159.
 * Op. cit., p. 400.