As regards the accuracy of the translation, I have submitted all passages about which I was in the least doubtful to the same gentleman who revised my translation of Professor Hering’s lecture; I have also given the German wherever I thought the reader might be glad to see it.
Chapter VIII
Translation of the chapter on “The Unconscious in Instinct,” from Von Hartmann’s “Philosophy of the Unconscious.”
Von Hartmann’s chapter on instinct is as follows:—
Instinct is action taken in pursuance of a purpose but without conscious perception of what the purpose is. [92a]
A purposive action, with consciousness of the purpose and where the course taken is the result of deliberation is not said to be instinctive; nor yet, again, is blind aimless action, such as outbreaks of fury on the part of offended or otherwise enraged animals. I see no occasion for disturbing the commonly received definition of instinct as given above; for those who think they can refer all the so-called ordinary instincts of animals to conscious deliberation ipso facto deny that there is such a thing as instinct at all, and should strike the word out of their vocabulary. But of this more hereafter.
Assuming, then, the existence of instinctive action as above defined, it can be explained as—
I. A mere necessary consequence of bodily organisation. [92b]
II. A mechanism of brain or mind contrived by nature.
III. The outcome of an unconscious activity of mind.