Departments of France as their delegate to the Assembly in Paris; and simultaneously with this he was made an honorary citizen of France, along with Washington and other distinguished friends of liberty.

Paine had already reached an age when he might reasonably have considered that the great work of his life was finished and that he might now look forward to a future of quiet and contentment, busy with his engineering and scientific interests, and the pleasures of social intercourse.

But he had thrown himself with utter forgetfulness of his own comfort and even safety into the fight for liberalism in England and had become its storm center. He was the acknowledged leader of a large and growing party known as the Paineites. And now, in the midst of the uproar over The Rights of Man, came the summons to aid the French people in putting into effect in their reconstructed government the principles which he had just laid down in his great book. Achille Audibert, representing the Department of Pas de Calais, had personally journeyed to London to notify Paine of his election to the Assembly. To such a summons he could not turn a deaf ear.

It read in

From the President of the Assembly, Hérault de Sechelles, Paine received a letter couched in the most flattering terms. part:

"France calls you, Sir, to its bosom, to perform one of the most useful and most honorable functions; that of contributing, by wise legislation, to the happiness of a people, whose destinies interest all who think and are united with the welfare of all who suffer in the world.

"It becomes the nation that has proclaimed the Rights of Man. to desire among her legislators him who first dared to estimate the consequences of those rights, and who has developed their principles with that of Common Sense, which is the only genius inwardly felt by all men, and the conception of which springs forth from nature and truth.

"The National Assembly gave you the title of Citizen, and had seen with pleasure that its decree was sanctioned by the only legitimate authority, that of the people, who had already claimed you, even before you were nominated.

"Come, Sir, and enjoy in France the most interesting of scenes for an observer and a philosopher-that of a confiding and generous people who, infamously betrayed for three years, wishing at last to end the struggle between slavery and liberty, between sincerity and perfidy, at length rises in its resolute and gigantic force, gives up to

the sword of the law those guilty crowned things who betrayed them, resists the barbarians whom they raised up to destroy the nation. Her citizens turned soldiers, her territory into camp and fortress, she yet calls and collects in congress the lights scattered through the universe. Men of genius, the most capable for their wisdom and virtue, she now calls to give to her people a government the most proper to insure their liberty and happiness."

(To be continued)

THE ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT OF INSTINCTS

BY JOHN J. BIRCH

N ORDER to adequately understand the relationship between instincts and life it is paramountly important to secure a comprehensive understanding of just what is meant by them. There is a formidable difficulty encountered in defining instincts for no agreement has been established as to when they begin to control actions or the relationship between them and reason.

The scientific world, however, has come to the general agreement that their apparent function is to fit the organism to the world; to enable it to battle for existence and to hold its place. in spite of opposing forces and enemies and that they are operative in both the plant and animal kingdoms. According to Paley: "Instinct is a propensity prior to experience and independent of instruction." This definition instead of establishing any conception of an instinct, is simply a dogmatic assertion from which questions branch off in all directions. Wundt held that, "instinctive movements were those which originally followed upon simple or compound voluntary acts, but which have become wholly or partly mechanized in the course of individual life or generic evolution." In this definition, Wundt leads one to believe that instincts were not always the same, but have undergone modifications or have lapsed into reflex actions. Spencer, makes a more positive statement than Wundt, for he holds without any hesitancy that "instincts may be described as compound reflex actions." Darwin gives a very broad and comprehensive understanding of the term instinct when he says, "An action. which we ourselves require experience in order to enable us to perform, when performed by an animal without experience and without knowing for what purpose it was performed is usually said to be instinctive." He makes this reservation, however,

"that a little dose of judgment or reason often comes into play even with animals low in the scale of nature."

Thorndike, of the modern school, formulates a definition very closely related to the one given by Darwin. He believes "that anything we do without having to learn to do it, in brief is an instinct an act that is the result of mere inner growth, not training or experience." MacDougall in his Social Psychology suggests an inclusive definition of instincts. He holds that they are "innate specific tendencies of mind that common to all members of one species; racial characteristics which have been slowly evolved in the process of adaptation of the species to their environment and that can neither be eradicated from the mental constitution of which they are innate elements, nor acquired by individuals in the course of their lifetime." This author holds, therefore, to the notion that instincts are forces by virtue of which the organisms made their adaptations-obscure directive powers which watch over the development of the organism. W. T. Hornaday, of the New York Zoological Park, adheres to this conception for it is his belief that an instinct is the knowledge or impulse which animals and men derive from their ancestry by inheritance and which they obey either consciously or subconciously in working out their own preservation, increase and betterment."

Angell defines instincts in terms of neural activity for he states that instincts "represent structurally performed pathways in the nervous system and stand functionally for effective inherited coordinations made in response to environmental demands." He further contends that it is impossible to draw any sharp line between instincts and reflex actions-that there is an overlapping of one into the other. These innate bonds may be ready to function shortly after birth or they may remain inoperative until a later stage in the development of the organism. As Averill has stated, "Nature does not turn the whole force of the racial past into the sluceways of life at one floodtide, rather many tides are freighted with it."

From these conceptions it may be deduced therefore that by instinct is implied the generic term comprising all those faculties of mind which lead to the conscious performance of actions which are adaptive in character, but pursued without necessary knowledge of the relationship between the means employed and the ends attained. Thus instincts may be characteristic both of

plants and animals for in both there is an adaption of means to ends as well as an attempt to preserve and propagate the specie. Because of structural differences, nevertheless, all of the instincts manifest in the animals do not apply to plants and vice versa. Those which have a feeling nature such as parental love, sympathy or play belong distinctly to the animal type; while foodgetting and self-preservation belong equally well to either plants or animals.

THE RELATION OF INSTINCTS TO REFLEX AND AUTOMATIC ACTS

There are some authorities who argue that reflex and automatic acts are synonymous with instincts inasmuch as they all operate for the well-being of the organism. Such a belief does not harmonize with experience for the reason that reflex acts presuppose experience, gained in most cases by methods of trial and error and an improvement upon subsequent trials or by muscular motivation-that is, there must be an excitation by a stimuli. without the organism. A young child will not unconsciously pull its hand away from a hot iron until after the individual has suffered the heat, but the eyelid will close due to an external stimulus as will also sneezing or pupilary activity. The mind then stores the experience and preserves itself from similar future experiences or unconsciously repeats the acts by the use of reflexes. Automatic acts such as breathing, respiration or circulation do not depend upon either a racial inheritance or muscular excitation, but upon a nervous stimulus, for such activities are wholly, or in part, within the organism itself. Thus the chemical condition of the blood may be responsible for changes in circulation and respiration, or the presence of food in the stomach incite the digestive processes.

There is no experience or nerve excitation necessary in the operation of instincts, for they are obviously further removed from purely physical life than are reflexes or automatic acts. The young birds on their first migratory journey or the salmon on their way to fresh water have not previously passed through a similar experience or are they nervously excited, but are directed. by an inner urge or wisdom.

It is probable that instincts are persistently followed from the mere inner force of inheritance without the stimulus of either