Instinct and intelligence / by Charles S. Myers. Instinct and intelligence : a reply / by Charles S. Myers.

  • Charles Samuel Myers
Date:
[1910?]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Instinct and intelligence / by Charles S. Myers. Instinct and intelligence : a reply / by Charles S. Myers. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    intelligence are “the novelty of the adjustment and the individuality displayed in these adjustments1.” But novel adjustments are observed where the influence of intelligence, as generally understood, would doubtless be disputed. Professor Forel brought back to Europe a number of Algerian ants, which build their nests with a wide entrance in their native country. In their European home these ants found that their quarters were continually infested with the common ant. So they set to work to close the wide entrance of their nest2. Or again, a dung- beetle, rolling its dung-ball along the sand, finds itself in a hollow, the sides of which are too steep for the ball to be pushed up from below. So the beetle buts down the sand at one side “ so as to produce an inclined plane of much less angle3.” We are of course free to believe that in such cases there is no true “ novelty of adjustment,” that the mode of reaction was already innate in the organism, only waiting for the rare situation which might evoke it. But my contention is that such a belief, if adequately elastic, is as applicable to intelligent as to instinctive behaviour. I will now indicate the position so far reached. Instead of defining instincts as “ complex reactions which are perfect the very first time,” I have endeavoured to show that they are all within very variable limits improvable by practice or by imitation, or are modifiable by changed conditions of environment. Further, in place of the usual definition of instincts as merely “fixed innate activities,” I have main¬ tained that the essential mental concomitants of instincts are the feeling of activity and a vague consciousness of the behaviour to be achieved. I would urge that the existence of these central factors proclaims the presence of intelligence throughout instinct, and that, as the organism becomes endowed with an increasingly larger number of mutually incompatible modes of reaction, the intelligent aspect apparently comes more and more to the fore while the instinctive aspect apparently recedes pari passu into the background. It is proverbial that the ordinary person, if asked whether man has instincts, replies “ No. The behaviour of animals is regulated by instinct. Man is moved by intelligence, by reason.” With one accord, however, psychologists insist that such early human acts as suckling, crying, crawling and walking, are instincts, and that even later acts are of like nature, e.g. the “ sexual instinct.” Others add to this list enor- 1 Lloyd Morgan, Animal L:fe and Intelligence, London, 1891, p. 458. 2 IA Annie psychologique. 2e Annee, 1895, p. 41. Cf. also Wasmann, op. cit. p. 142. 3 Lloyd Morgan, ibid. p. 368.
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