Heredity : a psychological study of its phenomena, laws, causes and consequences / from the French of Th. Ribot.

  • Ribot, Th. (Théodule), 1839-1916.
Date:
1875
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Heredity : a psychological study of its phenomena, laws, causes and consequences / from the French of Th. Ribot. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by King’s College London. The original may be consulted at King’s College London.

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    sui generis, a phenomenon so mysterious, so strange, that usually no other .explanation of it is offered but that of attributing it to the direct act of the Deity. This whole mistake is the result of a defective psychology, which makes no account of the unconscious activity of the soul. But we are so accustomed to contrast the characters of instinct with those of intelligence—to say that instinct is innate, invariable, automatic, while intelligence is something acquired, variable, spon- taneous—that it looks, at first, paradoxical to assert that instinct and intelligence are identical. It is said that instinct is innate. But if, on the one hand, we bear in mind that many instincts are acquired, and that, accord- ing to a theory to be afterwards explained, all instincts are only hereditary habits ; if, on the other hand, we observe that intelligence is in some sense held to be innate by all modern schools of philosophy—which agree to reject the hypothesis of the tabula rasa, and to accept either latent ideas or ci priori forms of thought, or preordinations of the nervous system and of the organism—it will be seen that this character of innateness does not constitute an absolute distinction between instinct and intelligence. It is true that intelligence is variable ; but so also is instinct, as we have seen. In winter, the Rhine beaver plasters his wall to windward : once he was a builder, now a burrower ; once he lived in society, now he is solitary.^ Intelligence can scarcely be more variable. Of this we have elsewhere given other instances. Instinct may be modified, lost, and re-awakened. Although intelligence is, as a rule, conscious, it may also become unconscious and automatic, without losing its identity. Neither is instinct always so blind, so mechanical, as is supposed, for at times it is at fault. The wasp that has faultily trimmed a leaf of its paper begins again. The bee only gives the hexagonal form to its cell after many attempts and alterations. It is difficult to believe that the loftier instincts of the higher animals are not accompanied by at least a confused consciousness. There is, therefore, no absolute distinction between instinct and intelli- gence ; there ' is not a single characteristic which, seriously Bulletin de la SocUU(PAnthropologie, 2° S^rie, tome i, p. 307.