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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III INSTINCTIVE BEHA VIOUR I.—Definit1on Of Inst1nctive Behav1our T11k1ik are probably few subjects which Imvo afforded more material for wonder niul pious admiration than I he instinctive endowmcnts of uninmls. " I look upon instinct," wrote Addison in one of his graceful essays, " as upon the principle of gravitation in bodies, which is not to be explained by any known qualities inherent in the bodies themselves, nor from any laws of mechanism, but as an immediate impression from the lirst Mover and the Divine Energy acting in the creatures." In like manner Spence said : " We may call the instincts of animals those faculties implanted in them by the Creator, by which, independent of instruction, observation or experience, and without a knowledge of the end in view, they are all alike impelled to the performance of certain actions tending to the well- being of the individual and the preservation of the species." t According to such views, instinct is an ultimate principle the natural genesis of which is beyond the pale of explanation. But similar views were, at the time these passages were written, held to apply, not only to animal behaviour, but also to animal structure. The development of the stag's antler, or of the insect's wing, was also regarded as "an immediate impression from the first Mover and the Divine Energy acting in the creatures." This view, however, is, neither in the case of(structure uor in the case of behaviour, that entertained by modern science. It is indeed an expression of opinion concerning the metaphysies of instinct. Leaving the question of ultimate origin precisely where it stood in the times of Addison and of Spence, modern science seeks to trace the natural antecedents of all natural phenomena, and regards structure and behaviour alik...