Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 6.djvu/78

 62 ALICE JULIA HAMLIN : the presence of consciousness in many cases, but affirms- that this does not invalidate his definition. Professor Lloyd Morgan takes middle ground. He refuses to accept consciousness as a criterion of distinction between instinctive and reflex action, because "the same series of activities may probably at one time be unconscious, and at another time conscious ; and because many actions almost universally regarded as reflex, may at times be accompanied by consciousness". 1 He prefers to distinguish reflex and instinctive activities by the organised sequence and co-ordi- nation present in instinctive actions. 2 Yet Professor Morgan himself recognises the answer that any psychologist would make to his reasons for objecting to the definition of instinct as a conscious process. Other processes, universally ad- mitted to be conscious, may become so mechanised by habit that they may be unconsciously performed at times. So in his more recent article he admits that ' instinct ' is con- scious, defining it as a " connate psychological impulse,"- while instinctive ' activities ' may be conscious or un- conscious. Hoffding distinguishes instincts (1) as more complex than reflexes ; (2) as including an obscure impulse of feeling, and consequently a sort of consciousness, though not consciousness of the end of the action ; and (3) as involving a direction of various powers to a more or less distant end outside the individual consciousness. 3 We need give only passing notice to this definition here, for it will reappear under a later heading of this paper. 2. The relation of Instinct to external and organic stimulus. The various attempts to distinguish between instinctive and reflex action have raised much discussion about the part played by sense stimuli in the initiation of instinct. Trying to draw too fine distinctions here, some of the authorities flatly contradict each other. For instance, Romanes states that " the stimulus which evokes a reflex action is, at most, a sensation; that which evokes an instinc- tive action is a perception " ; 4 while Carpenter asserts that the stimuli for reflexes are wholly unconscious, and that instincts are excited by impressions on the organs of sense. 5 Such restrictions of either term are too closely drawn, and 1 Animal Life and Intelligence, p. 433. 2 Op. cit., p. 422. 3 Hoffding' s Psychology, tr., p. 91. 4 Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals, p. 159. 5 Carpenter's Mental Physiology, p. 48.