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action. Indeed, no sharp line can be drawn between unconscious and subconscious choice of reaction and ordinary intellectual processes.

Most animals have little self-consciousness, and their reasoning powers at best are of a low order; but in kind, at least, the powers are not different from reason in man. A horse reaches over the fence to be company to another. This is instinct. When it lets down the bars with its teeth, that is reason. When a dog finds its way home at night by the sense of smell, this may be instinct; when he drags a stranger to his wounded master, that is reason. When a jack rabbit leaps over a bush to escape a dog, or runs in a circle before a coyote, or when it lies flat in the grass as a round ball of gray, indistinguishable from grass, this is instinct. the same animal is capable of reason

FIG. 277.-Tailor bird. Ornithotomus sutorius, and

[graphic]

nest.

But

that is, of a distinct choice among lines of action. Not long ago a rabbit came bounding across the university campus at Palo Alto. As it passed a corner it suddenly faced two hunting dogs running side by side toward it. It had the choice of turning back, its first instinct, but a dangerous one; of leaping over the dogs, or of lying flat on the ground. It chose none of these, and its choice was instantaneous. It ceased leaping, ran low, and went between the dogs just as they were in the act of seizing it, and the surprise of the dogs, as they stopped and tried to hurry around, was the same feeling that a man would have in like circumstances.

On the open plains of Merced County, Cal., the jack rabbit is the prey of the bald eagle. Not long since a rabbit pursued by an eagle was seen to run among the cattle. Leaping from cow to cow, he used these animals as a shelter from the savage bird. When the pursuit was closer, the rabbit broke cover for a barbed-wire fence. When the eagle swooped down on it, the rabbit moved a few inches to the right, and the eagle could not reach him through the fence. When the eagle came down on the other side, he moved across to the first. And this was continued until the eagle gave up the chase. It is instinct. that leads the eagle to swoop on the rabbit. It is instinct again for the rabbit to run away. But to run along the line of a barbed-wire fence demands some degree of reason. If the need to repeat it arose often in the lifetime of a single rabbit it would become a habit.

The difference between intellect and instinct in lower animals may be illustrated by the conduct of certain monkeys brought into relation with new experiences. At one time we had two adult monkeys, "Bob" and "Jocko," belonging to the genus. Macacus. Neither of these possessed the egg-eating instinct. At the same time we had a baby monkey, "Mono," of the genus Cercopithecus. Mono had never seen an egg, but his inherited impulses bore a direct relation to feeding on eggs, just as the heredity of Macacus taught the others how to crack nuts or to peel fruit.

To each of these monkeys we gave an egg, the first that any of them had ever seen. The baby monkey, Mono, being of an egg-eating race, devoured his egg by the operation of instinct or inherited habit. On being given the egg for the first time, he cracked it with his upper teeth, making a hole in it, and sucked out all the substance. Then holding the eggshell up to the light and seeing that there was no longer anything in it, he threw it away. All this he did mechanically, automatically, and it was just as well done with the first egg he ever saw as with any other he ate. All eggs since offered him he has treated in the same way.

The monkey Bob took the egg for some kind of nut. He broke it against his upper teeth and tried to pull off the shell, when the inside ran out and fell on the ground. He looked at it for a moment in bewilderment, took both hands and scooped up the yolk and the sand with which it was mixed and swallowed

[graphic]

FIG. 278.-A monkey, Cerocopithecus, in a characteristic attitude.

the whole. Then he stuffed the shell itself into his mouth. This act was not instinctive. It was the work of pure reason. Evidently his race was not familiar with the use of eggs and had acquired no instincts regarding them. He would do it better. next time. Reason is an inefficient agent at first, a weak tool; but when it is trained it becomes an agent more valuable and more powerful than any instinct.

The monkey Jocko tried to eat the egg offered him in much the same way that Bob did, but not liking the taste he threw it away.

The confusion of highly perfected instinct with intellect is very common in popular discussions. Instinct grows weak and less accurate in its automatic obedience as the intellect becomes available in its place. Intellect and instinct as well as all other nervous processes are outgrowths from the simple reflex response to external conditions. But instinct insures a single definite response to the corresponding stimulus. The intellect has a choice of responses. In its lower stages it is vacillating and ineffective; but as its development goes on it becomes alert and adequate to the varied conditions of life. It grows with the need for improvement. It will therefore become impossible for the complexity of life to outgrow the adequacy of man to adapt himself to its conditions.

Many animals currently believed to be of high intelligence are not so. The fur seal, for example, finds its way back from the long swim of two or three thousand miles through a foggy and stormy sea, and is never too late or too early in arrival. The female fur seal goes two hundred miles to her feeding grounds in summer, leaving the pup on the shore. After a week or two she returns to find him within a few rods of the rocks where she had left him. Both mother and young know each other by call and by odor, and neither is ever mistaken though ten thousand other pups and other mothers occupy the same rookery. But this is not intelligence. It is simply instinct,

because it has no element of choice in it. Whatever its ancestors were forced to do the fur seal does to perfection. Its instincts are perfect as clockwork, and the necessities of migration must keep them so. But if brought into new conditions

it is dazed and stupid. It cannot choose when different lines of action are presented.

The Bering Sea Commission of 1896 made an experiment

on the possibility of separating the young male fur seals, or "killables," from the old ones in the same band. The method was to drive them through a wooden chute or runway with two valvelike doors at the end. These animals can be driven like sheep, but to sort them in the way proposed proved impossible. The most experienced males would beat their noses against a closed door, if they had seen a seal before them pass through it. That this door had been shut and another opened beside it passed their comprehension. They could not choose the new direction. In like manner a male fur seal will watch the killing and skinning of his mates with perfect composure. He will sniff at their blood with languid curiosity; so long as it is not his own it does not matter. That his own blood may flow out on the ground in a minute or two he cannot foresee.

Reason arises from the necessity for a choice among actions. It may arise as a clash among instincts which forces on the animal the necessity of choosing. A doe, for example, in a rich pasture has the instinct to feed. It hears the hounds and has the instinct to flee. Its fawn may be with her and it is her instinct to remain and protect it. This may be done in one of several ways. In proportion as the mother chooses wisely will be the fawn's chance of survival. Thus under difficult conditions, reason or choice among actions rises to the aid of the lower animals as well as man.

The word mind is popularly used in two different senses. In the biological sense mind is the sum total of all psychic changes, actions, and reactions. Under the head of psychic. functions are included all operations of the nervous system as well as all functions of like nature which may exist in organisms without specialized nerve fibers or nerve cells. As thus defined mind would include all phenomena of irritability, and even plants have the rudiments of it. The operations of the mind in this sense need not be conscious. With the lower animals almost all of them are automatic and unconscious. With man most of them must be so. All functions of the sensorium, irritability, reflex action, instinct, reason, volition, are alike in essential nature though differing greatly in their degree of specialization.

In another sense the term mind is applied only to conscious reasoning or conscious volition. In this sense it is mainly an attribute of man, the lower animals showing it in

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