[1] Kempf in his book on the vegetative nervous system goes into great detail the way the visceral needs force the animal or human to satisfy them. Life is a sort of war between the vegetative and the central nervous system. There is just enough truth in this point of view to make it very entertaining.
Even in the low forms of life instincts are not perfect at the start, or perfect in details, and almost every member of a species will show individuality in dealing with an obstacle to an instinctive action. In other words, though there is instinct and this furnishes the basis for action in the lowest forms of life, there is also the capacity for learning by experience,—and this is Intelligence. "The basis of instinct is heredity and we can impute an action to pure instinct only if it is hereditary. The other class of actions are those devised by the individual animal for himself on the basis of his own experience and these are called generally intelligent. Of intelligence operating within the sphere of instinct there is ample evidence. 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. They are constantly modified by other instincts and through them runs the influence of intelligence. The function of intelligence is to control instincts, to choose ways and means for the fulfillment of instincts that are blocked, etc. Moreover, the effects of teachings, ethics, social organization and tradition, operating through the social instincts, are to repress, inhibit and whip into conformity every mode of instinctive conduct. The main instincts are those relating to nutrition and reproduction, the care of the young, to averting danger or destroying it, to play and organized activity, to acquiring, perhaps to teaching and learning and to the social relations generally. But manners creep in to regulate our methods of eating and the things we shall eat; and we may not eat at all unless we agree to get the things to eat a certain way. We may not cohabit except under tremendous restriction, and marriage with its aims and purposes is sexual in origin but modified largely and almost beyond recognition by social consideration, taste, esthetic matters, taboos and economic conditions. We may not treat our enemy as instinct bids us do,—for only in war may one kill and here one kills without any personal purpose or anger, almost without instinct. We may be compelled through social exigencies to treat our enemy politely, eat with him, sleep with him and help him out of difficulties and thus completely thwart one instinctive set of reactions. Play becomes regulated by rules and customs, becomes motivated by the desire for superiority, or the desire for gain, and may even leave the physical field entirely and become purely mental. And so on. It does no special practical good to discuss instincts as if they operated in man as such. They become purposes. Therefore we shall defer the consideration of instincts and purposes in detail until later chapters of this book.
Since instincts are too rigid to meet the needs of the social and traditional life of man, they become intellectualized and socialized into purposes and ambitions, sometimes almost beyond recognition. Nevertheless, the driving force of instinct is behind every purpose, every ambition, even though the individual himself has not the slightest idea of the force that is at work. This does not mean that instinct acts as a sort of cellar- plotter, roving around in a subconsciousness, or at least no such semi-diabolical personality need be postulated, any more than it need be postulated for the automatic mechanism that regulates heartbeat or digestion. The organic tensions and depressions that constitute instinct are not conscious or subconscious; they affect our conscious personalities so that we desire something, we fit that desire in with the rest of our desires, we seek the means of gratifying that desire first in accordance with means that Nature has given us and second in accordance with social teaching and our intelligence. If the desire brings us sharply in contact with obstacles imposed either by circumstances or more precious desire, we inhibit that desire,—and thus the instinct. Because organic tensions and depressions are periodic and are dependent upon the activities of glands and tissues not within our control, the desires may never be completely squelched and may arise as often as some outer stimulus brings them into activity, to plague and disorder the life of the conscious personality.
3. With this preliminary consideration of instinct, we pass on to certain of the phases of intelligence. How to define intelligence is a difficulty best met by ignoring definition. But this much is true: that the prime function of intelligence is to store up the past and present experiences so that they can be used in the future, and that it adds to the rigid mechanism of instinct a plastic force which by inhibiting and exciting activity according to need steers the organism through intricate channels.
Instinct, guided by a plan, conveniently called Nature's plan, is not itself a planner. The discharge of one mechanism discharges another and so on through a series until an end is reached,—an end apparently not foreseen by the organism but acting for the good of the race to which the organism belongs. Intelligence, often enough not conscious of the plans of Nature,[1] indeed, decidedly ignorant of these plans, works for some good established by itself out of stimuli set up by the instincts. It plans, looks backward and forward, reaches the height of reflecting on itself, gets to recognize the existence of instinct and sets itself the task of controlling instinct. Often enough it fails, instinct breaks through, takes possession of the means of achievement, accomplishes its purpose—but the failure of intelligence to control and the misguided control it attempts and assumes are merely part of the general imperfections of the organism. A perfect intelligence would be clearly able to understand its instincts, to give each of them satisfaction by a perfect compromise, would pick the methods for accomplishment without error, and storing up the past experiences without loss, would meet the future according to a plan.
[1] We are at this stage in a very dark place in human thought. We say that instincts seek the good of the race, or have some racial purpose, as the sexual instinct has procreation as its end. But the lover wooing his sweetheart has no procreation plan in his mind; he is urged on by a desire to win this particular girl, a desire which is in part sexual, in part admiration of her beauty, grace, and charm; again it is the pride of possession and achievement; and further is the result of the social and romantic ideals taught in books, theaters, etc. He may not have the slightest desire for a child; as individual he plans one thing,—but we who watch him see in his approach the racial urge for procreation and even disregard his purposes as unimportant. Who and what is the Race, where does it reside, how can it have purposes? Call it Nature, and we are no better off. We must fall back on an ancient personalization of forces, and our minds rest easier when we think of a Planner operating in all of us and perhaps smiling as He witnesses our strivings.
As we study the nervous systems of animals, we find that with the apparent growth of intelligence there is a development of that part of the brain called the cerebrum. In so far as certain other parts of the brain are concerned—medulla, pons, mid-brain, basal ganglia cerebellum—we who are human are not essentially superior to the dog, the cow, the elephant or the monkey. But when the neopallium, or the cerebrum, is considered, the enormous superiority of man (and the superiority of the higher over the lower animals) becomes striking. Anatomically the cerebrum is a complex elaboration of cells and fibers that have these main purposes: First, to record in perfect and detailed fashion the EXPERIENCES of the organism, so that here are memory centers for visual and auditory experiences, for skin, joint and bone experiences of all kinds, speech memories, action memories, and undoubtedly for the recording in some way not understood of the pleasure-pain feelings. Second, it has a hold, a grip on the motor mechanism of the body, on the muscles that produce action, so that the intelligence can nicely adapt movement to the circumstances, to purpose, and can inhibit the movements that arise reflexly. Thus in certain diseases, where the part of the brain involved in movement is injured, voluntary movement disappears but reflex action is increased. Third, the neopallium, or cerebrum, is characterized by what are known as association tracts, i.e., connections of intricate kinds which link together areas of the brain having different functions and thus allow for combinations of activity of all kinds. The brain thus acts to increase the memories of the past, and, as we all know, man is probably the only animal to whom the past is a controlling force, sometimes even an overpowering force. It acts to control the conduct of the individual, to delay or to inhibit it, and it acts to increase in an astonishing manner the number of reactions possible. One stimulus arousing cerebral excitement may set going mechanisms of the brain through associated tracts that will produce conduct of one kind or another for years to come.
We spoke in a previous chapter of choice as an integral function of the organism. While choice, when two competing stimuli awake competing mechanisms, may be non-cerebral in its nature, largely speaking it is a function of the cerebrum, of the intelligence. To choose is a constant work of the intelligence, just as to doubt is an unavailing effort to find a choice. Choice blocked is doubt, one of the unhappiest of mental states. I shall not pretend to solve the mystery of WHO chooses,—WHAT chooses; perhaps there is a constant immortal ego; perhaps there is built up a series of permanently excited areas which give rise to ego feeling and predominate in choice; perhaps competing mechanisms, as they struggle (in Sherrington's sense) for motor pathways, give origin to the feeling of choice. At any rate, because we choose is the reason that the concept of will has arisen in the minds of both philosopher and the man in the street, and much of our feeling of worth, individuality and power—mental factors of huge importance in character—arises from the power to choose. Choice is influenced by—or it is a net result of—the praise and blame of others, conscience, memory, knowledge of the past, plans for the future. It is the fulcrum point of conduct!
That animals have intelligence in the sense in which I have used the term is without doubt. No one who reads the work of Morgan, the Peckhams, Fabre, Hobhouse and other recent investigators of the instincts can doubt it. Whether animals think in anything like the form our thought takes is another matter. We are so largely verbal in thought that speech and the capacity to speak seem intimately related to thought. For the mechanics of thought, for the laws of the association of ideas, the reader is referred to the psychologists. That minds differ according to whether they habitually follow one type of associations or another is an old story. The most annoying individual in the world is the one whose associations are unguided by a controlling purpose, who rambles along misdirected by sound associations or by accidental resemblances in structure of words, or by remote meanings,—who starts off to tell you that she (the garrulous old lady) went to the store to get some eggs, that she has a friend in the country whose boy is in the army (aren't the Germans dreadful, she's glad she's born in this country), city life is very hard, it isn't so healthy as the country, thank God her health is good, etc., etc.," and she never arrives at the grocery store to buy the eggs. The organizing of the associations through a goal idea is part of that organizing energy of the mind and character previously spoken of. The mind tends automatically to follow the stimuli that reach it, but the organizing energy has as one of its functions the preventing of this, and controlled thinking follows associations that are, as it were, laid down by the goal. In fatigue, in illness, in certain of the mental diseases, the failure of the organizing energy brings about failure "to concentrate" and the tyranny of casual associations annoys and angers. The stock complaint of the neurasthenic that everything distracts his attention is a reversion back to the unorganized conditions of childhood, with this essential difference: that the neurasthenic rebels against his difficulty in thinking, whereas the child has no rebellion against that which is his normal state. Minds differ primarily and hugely in their power of organizing experience, in so studying and recording the past that it becomes a guide for the, future. Basic in this is the power of resisting the irrelevant association, of checking those automatic mental activities that tend to be stirred up by each sound, each sight, smell, taste and touch. The man whose task has no appeal for him has to fight to keep his mind on it, and there are other people, the so-called absent-minded, who are so over- concentrated, so wedded to a goal in thought, that lesser matters are neither remembered nor noticed. In its excess overconcentration is a handicap, since it robs one of that alertness for new impressions, new sources of thought so necessary for growth. The fine mind is that which can pursue successfully a goal in thought but which picks en route to that goal, out of the irrelevant associations, something that enriches its conclusions.