Page:Territory in Bird Life by Henry Eliot Howard (London, John Murray edition).djvu/115

Rh can be shown that males, when they first reach their breeding grounds, are even then intolerant of one another's presence, if their actions and attitudes betray similar symptoms of quasiconation, if disputes are rife and the struggles of a kind to preclude all doubt as to their reality, then it is manifest that in such cases their intolerance cannot be due to the presence of the female.

Here, however. I must refer to a view which is held by some psychologists, namely, that amongst the higher animals, even on the occasion of the first performance of an instinctive act, there is some vague awareness of the proximate end to be attained. Discussing the nature of instincts. Dr McDougall says, "Nor does our definition insist, as some do, that the instinctive action is performed without awareness of the end towards which it tends, for this, too, is not essential; it may be, and in the case of the lower animals no doubt often is, so performed, as also by the very young child, but in the case of the higher animals some prevision of the immediate end, however vague, probably accompanies an instinctive action that has often been repeated." A similar view seems to be held by Dr Stout. " As I have already shown," he says, "animals in their instinctive actions do actually behave from the outset as if they were continuously interested in the development of what is for them one and the same situation or course of events; they actually