MORAL INSTINCT.
An act done by instinct differs from every other kind of act in that an understanding of its object does not precede it but follows upon it. Instinct is therefore a rule of action given à priori. We may be unaware of the object to which it is directed, as no understanding of it is necessary to its attainment. On the other hand, if an act is done by an exercise of reason or intelligence, it proceeds according to a rule which the understanding has itself devised for the purpose of carrying out a preconceived aim. Hence it is that action according to rule may miss its aim, while instinct is infallible.
On the à priori character of instinct we may compare what Plato says in the Philebus. With Plato instinct is a reminiscence of something which a man has never actually experienced in his lifetime; in the same way as, in the Phaedo and elsewhere, everything that a man learns is regarded as a reminiscence. He has no other word to express the à priori element in all experience.
There are, then, three things that are à priori:
(1) Theoretical Reason, in other words, the conditions which make all experience possible.
(2) Instinct, or the rule by which an object promoting the life of the senses may, though unknown, be attained.
(3) The Moral Law, or the rule by which an action takes place without any object.
Accordingly rational or intelligent action proceeds by a rule laid down in accordance with the object as it is understood. Instinctive action proceeds by a rule without an understanding of the object of it. Moral action proceeds by a rule without any object at all.
Theoretical Reason is the aggregate of rules in accordance with which all my knowledge—that is to say, the whole world of experience—necessarily proceeds. In the same manner Instinct is the aggregate of rules in accordance with which all my action necessarily proceeds if it meets with no obstruction. Hence it seems to me that Instinct may most appropriately be called practical reason, for like theoretical reason it determines the must of all experience.
The so-called moral law, on the other hand, is only one aspect of the better consciousness, the aspect which it presents from the point of view of instinct. This better consciousness is something lying beyond all experience, that is, beyond all reason, whether of the theoretical or the practical kind, and has nothing to do with it; whilst it is in virtue of the mysterious union of it and reason in the same individual that the better consciousness comes into conflict with reason, leaving the individual to choose between the two.