perating group of
stimuli from the alimentary tract in need of food, there is an adaptive
application of the activities in a definite mode of behaviour. Like
data are afforded in a great number of cases of instinctive procedure,
sometimes occurring very early in life, not infrequently deferred until
the organism is more fully developed, but all of them dependent upon
racial preparation. No doubt there is some range of variation in the
behaviour, just such variation as the theory of natural selection
demands. But there can be no question that the higher animals inherit
a bodily organisation and a nervous system, the functional working of
which gives rise to those inherited modes of behaviour which are termed
instinctive.

It is to be noted that the term "instinctive" is here employed in the
adjectival form as a descriptive heading under which may be grouped many
and various modes of behaviour due to racial preparation. We speak
of these as inherited; but in strictness what is transmitted through
heredity is the complex of anatomical and physiological conditions under
which, in appropriate circumstances, the organism so behaves. So far the
term "instinctive" has a restricted biological connotation in terms
of behaviour. But the connecting link between biological evolution and
psychological evolution is to be sought,--as Darwin fully realised,--in
the phenomena of instinct, broadly considered. The term "instinctive"
has also a psychological connotation. What is that connotation?

Let us take the case of the swimming duckling or the pecking chick, and
fix our attention on the first instinctive performance. Grant that just
as there is, strictly speaking, no inherited behaviour, but only the
conditions which render such behaviour under appropriate circumstances
possible; so too there is no inherited experience, but only the
conditions which render such experience possible; then the cerebral
conditions in both cases are the same. The biological behaviour-complex,
including the total stimulation and the total response with the
intervening or resultant processes in the sensorium, is accompanied by
an experience-complex including the initial stimulation-consciousness
and resulting response-consciousness. In the experience-complex are
comprised data which in psychological analysis are grouped under the
headings of cognition, affective tone and conation. But the complex is
probably experienced as an unanalysed whole. If then we us