Note 12 — Chapter I · Introductory

Latterly the question of instincts has been a subject of somewhat extensive discussion among students of animal behaviour, and throughout this discussion the argument has commonly been conducted on neurological, or at the most on physiological ground. This line of argument is well and lucidly presented in a volume recently published (The Science of Human Behavior, New York, 1913) by Mr. Maurice Parmalee. The book offers an incisive critical discussion of the Nature of Instinct (ch. xi) with a specific reference to the instinct of workmanship (p. 252). The discussion runs, faithfully and competently, on neurological ground and reaches the outcome to be expected in an endeavour to reduce instinct to neurological (or physiological) terms. As has commonly been true of similar endeavours, the outcome is essentially negative, in that “instinct” is not so much explained as explained away. The reason of this outcome is sufficiently evident; “instinct,” being not a neurological or physiological concept, is not statable in neurological or physiological terms. The instinct of workmanship no more than any other instinctive proclivity is an isolable, discrete neural function; which, however, does not touch the question of its status as a psychological element. The effect of such an analysis as is offered by Mr. Parmalee is not to give terminological precision to the concept of “instinct” in the sense assigned it in current usage, but to dispense with it; which is an untoward move in that it deprives the student of the free use of this familiar term in its familiar sense and therefore constrains him to bring the indispensable concept of instinct in again surreptitiously under cover of some unfamiliar term or some terminological circumlocution. The current mechanistic analyses of animal behaviour are of great and undoubted value to any inquiry into human conduct, but their value does not lie in an attempt to make them supersede those psychological phenomena which it is their purpose to explain. That such supersession of psychological phenomena by the mechanistic formulations need nowise follow and need not be entertained appears, e. g., in such work as that of Mr. Loeb, referred to above, Comparative Physiology of the Brain and Comparative Psychology.