Homing instinct

“ Originally performed with consciousness and reflection, many instinctive actions of the animals have become, in the course of time, unconscious, exactly as is the case with the habitual activities of human reason. These, too, may, with like justice, be looked upon as the workings of innate instinct, as, indeed, the impulse to self-preservation, maternal love, and the social instinct often are regarded. Again, instinct is neither distinctively an attribute of the brain [Pg 308] of the animal, nor is the reason an especial endowment of human beings. ”

“ That instinctive actions can be modified or inhibited by intelligence and will is proved by any trained beast of prey which masters its hunger and the impulse to snap at the piece of flesh held before it, because it knows that if it does not control itself painful blows will be the consequence. In a later lecture I shall return to the connexion between will and instinct; all that concerns us here is to regard instincts as the outcome of the processes of selection, and as an indirect proof of the reality of these. ”

“ An irresistible instinct, an all-compelling law of nature, moves every living creature to seek a mate of its own species but of opposite sex, to unite a second existence with its own, to awaken responsive emotions through complete self-surrender, and thus to form the closest bond which links being to being, life to life. ”

“ You will hear it stated, by some, that there are just two instincts, and that all instinctive behavior belongs under the head of one or the other of these two. The one is the instinct to preserve one's individual life, and the other is the instinct to propagate the species. Mating, nesting and care of the young come under the reproductive instinct, while feeding, flight from danger, and shunning extreme heat or cold are modes of self-preservation. This seems logical enough, but it is very bad psychology. ”

“ To the broody hen the notion would probably seem monstrous that there should be a creature in the world to whom a nestful of eggs was not the utterly fascinating and precious and never-to-be-too-much-sat-upon object which it is to her. [2]
Thus we may be sure that, however mysterious some animals’ instincts may appear to us, our instincts will appear no less mysterious to them. And we may conclude that, to the animal which obeys it, every impulse and every step of every instinct shines with its own sufficient light, and seems at the moment the only eternally right and proper thing to do. ”

“ Of their instincts, I believe we have rather held too high than too low estimate, because we have not enough recognized or respected our own. We do not differ from the lower creatures by not possessing instinct, but by possessing will and conscience, to order our innate impulses to the best ends. ”

“ There are modifications of instinctive action directly traceable to experience which cannot be explained by the interaction of purely hereditary tendencies and there are cases in which the whole structure of the instinct is profoundly modified by the experience of the individual." Hobhouse, whom I quote, goes on to give many examples of instinctive action modified by experience and intelligence in the insect and lower animal world.
What I wish especially to point out is that man has many instinctive bases for conduct, but instincts as such are not often seen in pure form in man. ”

“ Call it instinct, if you will, but is that not to be considered as more than instinct which prompts the Cat to distinguish between the friend and the enemy of its master and mistress, and even to protect them from the attacks of an enemy at the risk of the life of the animal? The number of such instances is legion. Surely the faithfulness of our domestic animals cannot be doubted, but we may doubt the humanity of man to the animal kingdom when the evidence of the same senses in what are termed the lower animals is said to be instinct, while in the human it is called soul and mind. ”

“ Of all propensities, the sexual impulses bear on their face the most obvious signs of being instinctive, in the sense of blind, automatic, and untaught. The teleology they contain is often at variance with the wishes of the individuals concerned; and the actions are performed for no assignable reason but because Nature urges just that way. Here, if ever, then, we ought to find those characters of fatality, infallibility, and uniformity, which, we are told, make of actions done from instinct a class so utterly apart. ”

“ Thus, greediness and suspicion, curiosity and timidity, coyness and desire, bashfulness and vanity, sociability and pugnacity, seem to shoot over into each other as quickly, and to remain in as unstable equilibrium, in the higher birds and mammals as in man. They are all impulses, congenital, blind at first, and productive of motor reactions of a rigorously determinate sort. Each one of them, then, is an instinct, as instincts are commonly defined. ”

“ But this, what may be called human intelligence of a domesticated animal is something quite different from the vulpine or animal intelligence. This intelligence of a domesticated animal is an intelligence which comes not from reasoning nor from instinct, but from sympathy, from a feeling of love and attachment. ”

“ Hence a struggle may often be observed in animals between different instincts, or between an instinct and some habitual disposition; as when a dog rushes after a hare, is rebuked, pauses, hesitates, pursues again, or returns ashamed to his master; or as between the love of a female dog for her young puppies and for her master,—for she may be seen to slink away to them, as if half ashamed of not accompanying her master. But the most curious instance known to me of one instinct getting the better of another, is the migratory instinct conquering the maternal instinct. ”

“ It would appear, if the two qualities must be associated, that, at all events, there are two varieties of instinct: blind instinct, which is superior to reason, so far that it never errs, as it is God who guides; and inventive instinct, which enables the superior animals to provide for unexpected difficulties, or to meet those which memory has impressed upon them. But if we examine ourselves, the difficulty becomes even greater—we have decidedly two separate qualities. We are instinctive as well as reasonable beings; and what is inventive instinct but a species of reason, if not reason itself? ”

“ Definition.—I understand, by instinct, a law of action, governing and directing the movement of sentient beings—distinct, on the one hand, from the mere blind forces of matter, as attraction, etc., and from reason on the other; a law working to a given end by impulse, yet blindly—the subject not knowing why he thus works; a law innate, inherent in the constitution of the animal, not acquired but transmitted, the origin of which is to be found in the intelligent author of the universe. These I take to be the principal characteristics of that which we term instinct. ”

“ This comparison gives, I think, an accurate notion of the frame of mind under which an instinctive action is performed, but not necessarily of its origin.... If we suppose any habitual action to become inherited—and it can be shown that this does sometimes happen—then the resemblance between what originally was a habit and an instinct becomes so close as not to be distinguished.... But it would be a serious error to suppose that the greater number of instincts have been acquired by habit in one generation, and then transmitted by inheritance to succeeding generations. ”

“ It is therefore evident that it is not for instinct alone to determine unconditionally all the phenomena that take place in man in the state of affection, and that on the contrary the will of man can place limits to instinct. When instinct only determines all phenomena in man, there is nothing more that can recall the person; there is only a physical creature before you, and consequently an animal; for every physical creature subject to the sway of instinct is nothing else. ”

“ I can see but one method of attaining this end—a method long employed in animal psychology: that of admitting to the list of human instincts only those which present the following characteristics:— (1) They are innate. This does not imply that they appear at the very hour of birth, but that they are anterior to experience, not acquired; that they appear ready made, as soon as the fitting conditions exist. Those which are called deferred instincts, which make their appearance late, such as the sexual instinct in man and many animals, are none the less innate. ”

“ And so it comes about that, witnessing this torpor, an observer of mankind might say that no instinctive propensity toward certain objects existed at all. It existed, but it existed miscellaneously, or as an instinct pure and simple only, before habit was formed. A habit, once grafted on an instinctive tendency, restricts the range of the tendency itself, and keeps us from reacting on any but the habitual objects, although other objects might just as well have been chosen had they been the first comers. ”

“ But his instinctive behavior has not the hard-and-fast, ready-made character that we see in the insects. Man is by all odds the most pottering, hem-and-hawing of animals. Instinct does not lead him straight to his goal, but makes him seek this way and that till he finds it. His powers of observation, memory and thought are drawn into the game, and thus instinct in man is complicated and partly concealed by learning and reasoning. ”

“ The evolution of man's nature has caused him unconsciously to modify his elemental, instinctive, passional emotions, and sub [Pg 102] ordinate them to the dictates of social, ethical, moral, and æsthetic feelings and ideals, and to intellectual considerations. Even the original elemental instincts of the lower animals have been modified by reason of the social requirements of the pack, herd, or drove, until the modified instinct is now the ruling force. ”

“ As soon as the reason of the instinctive tendency is inquired into, it is weakened as instinct. We pass from the action itself to the end it is fitted to subserve; and, if the instinctive action is not the most appropriate, or has hurtful results, we have already reached the stage in which the instinct is checked, and begins to yield to action directed by a principle. ”

“ If an instinct ever can be traced in man, certainly it is in the present case: and is instinct a superfluous monitor exactly in this one case? Can instinct mislead just in this one circumstance? Can it ever be, that the air which fills us with the greatest disgust, is the finest elixir of life, as Dumoulins had the boldness to maintain in one of his official reports. ”

“ The old view that instinctive behaviour was originally intelligent, and that instinct is "lapsed intelligence," is a tempting one, and is suggested by the way in which habitual intelligent actions cease in the individual to require intelligent control, but it rests on the unproved hypothesis that the acquisitions of the individual can be entailed on the race. ”

“ The condition of human knowledge regarding which Hume so much wonders, he further describes as containing an antagonism between reason and instinct; this instinct, it is said, which embraces many sorts of powers, inclinations, &c., deceives us in many different ways, and reason demonstrates this. ”

“ The reason of this will be obvious when we take into consideration some of the distinctive attributes of the subjective mind. It will not be disputed that the attribute of the subjective mind, which is known as intuition when applied to man, corresponds exactly with what we call instinct when applied to animals. Now, there are three primary functions, or, let us say, instincts, of the subjective mind, which are common to men and the whole animal creation. The first pertains to the preservation of the life of the individual, and is called, in common parlance, the instinct of self-preservation. ”

“ Here we have to deal with a primitive instinct—the profoundest and deepest-seated instinct of humanity, save only the instincts of food and drink and of self-preservation. Man, like all other animals, has two main functions: to feed his own organism, and to reproduce his species. Ancestral habit leads him, when mature, to choose himself a mate—because he loves her. ”

“ The two opposite instincts relative to the same object ripen in succession. If the first one engenders a habit, that habit will inhibit the application of the second instinct to that object. All animals are tame during the earliest phase of their infancy. ”

“ It would appear, therefore, that this preconception springs not from an original instinct or primary impression of nature, such as gives rise to self-love, affection betwixt the sexes, love of progeny, gratitude, resentment; since every instinct of this kind has been found absolutely universal in all nations and ages, and has always a precise, determinate object, which it inflexibly pursues. ”

“ So the proof is complete by this double method, that what we now call instinct is degeneration of voluntary actions; therefore, if the analogy applies to the whole of creation, if all nature is uniform, then what is instinct in lower animals, as well as in men, must be the degeneration of will. ”

“ Instincts are here distinguished from the emotions to which they give rise. Without unduly stretching the meaning of the word "suggestion," in the sense of a prompting to action not specifically in hypnotism, instinct may perhaps be looked upon as the innate suggestion of heredity. The two primary factors held to be fundamental in shaping and influencing the character of the individual are environment and heredity. ”

“ We must not depreciate the creature too much if, in unusual circumstances, it acts in an ineffective way along lines of behaviour which are normally handed over to instinct; and (2) we must leave open the possibility that even routine instinctive behaviour may be suffused with awareness and backed by endeavour. ”