paralyzes a caterpillar without killing
it, and carries it home for food for its young.[2] There are
again many cases of "insects which invariably lay their eggs
in the only places where the grubs, when hatched, will find the
food they need and can eat, or where the larvae will be able to
attach themselves as parasites to some host in a way that is
necessary to their survival."[3] In many instances these complicated
trains of action are performed by the animal in a
situation absolutely strange to it, without its ever having seen
the act performed before, having been born frequently after
its parents had died, and itself destined to die long before its
grubs will have hatched.

[Footnote 2: Bergson: _Creative Evolution_, p. 172.]

[Footnote 3: McDougall: _Social Psychology_, p. 24. (Except
where otherwise noted, all references are to the fourth edition.)]

THE NUMBER AND VARIETY OF MAN'S INSTINCTS. Various attempts
have been made, notably by such men as James,
McDougall, and Thorndike, to enumerate and classify the
tendencies with which man is at birth endowed, or which,
like the sex instinct, make their appearance at a certain stage
in biological growth, regardless of the particular training to
which the individual has been subjected. Earlier classifications
were inclined to speak of instincts as very general and as
half consciously purposeful in character. Thus it is still
popularly customary to speak of the "instinct of self-preservation,"
the "instinct of hunger," and the "parental instinct."
The tendency of present-day psychology is to note just what
responses take place in given specific situations. As a result
of such observation, particularly by such biologists as Watson
and Jennings,[1] instincts have come to be regarded not as
general and purposive but as specific and automatic. Thus it
is no instinct of self-preservation that drives the child to
blink its eyes at a blinding flash of light; it is solely and simply
the very direct and immediate tendency to blink its eyes in
just that way whenever such a phenomenon occurs. It is no
deliberate intent to inhale the oxygen necessary to the sustenance
of life that causes us to breathe. No more is it a conscious
plan to provide the organism with nourishment that
prompts us to eat our breakfast in the morning; it is simply
the immediate and irresistible enticement of food after a
night's fast. Not a deliberate motive of maternity prompts
the mother to caress and