Unconscious Memory

rtmann's position i

theless think that some of my readers may be helped by the following extracts from the notes I

action done with a purpose, but

Some hold that birds when they are building their nest know as well that they mean to bring up a family in it as a young married couple do when they build themse

nherited knowledge in respect of certain facts, and o

ved by nature, and again of "a psychical organisation," as t

t any rate been enabled to draw inferences which will warrant us in conceiving of it as a material substance apart from bodily substance, we can

he spider instinctive in voiding the fluids f

raining the volition of the bird," of "each variation and modification of the instinct," as though instinct, purpose, and, later on, clairvoyance, were persons, and not words characterising

the ornithological department at the British Museum, who kindly gives it me as his opinion that though cuckoos do imitate the eggs of the species on whom they foist their young ones, yet one cuckoo will probably lay in the nests of one species also, and will stick

claim for it that it explains a great many other things. This must have been the passage which Mr. Sully had in view when he very justly wrote that Von Hartmann "

end as hopeless. I have watched three such cases this spring in a tree not twenty feet from my own window and on a level with my eye, so that I have been able to see what was going on at all hours of the day. In each case the nest was made well and rapidly up to a certain point, and then got top-heavy and tumbled over, so that little was left on t

and these are not two separable things, but one and inseparable, with, as it were, two sides; the one of which is a function of the other. There was never yet either matter without mind, however low, nor mind, however high, without a material body

n in the germ of vibrations that were vibrating in the body of the parent, and which, when stimulated by vibrations of a suitable rhythm, become more and more powerful till they suffice to set the body in visible action. For my own part I only ventur

t of sight the origin of the glacier in snow! Von Hartmann loses sight of the origin of instinctive in deliberative actions because the two classes of action are now in many respects different. His

ays hold of the bird and makes it do this or that, as a master makes a servant do his bidding? If so, he again personifies the purpose itself, and must therefore embody it, or be talking in a manner which plain people cannot understand. If, on the other hand, he means "how simple is the view that the bird acts unconsciously," this is not more simple than sup

later on, in so far as it is directed against instinct generally. I understand him to mean that if we admit instinctive action, and the modifications of that action which more nearly resemble results of reason, to be actions of the same ultimate kind differing in degree

ot conscious. We reply, that we do not see the absurdity of the position which we grant we have b

ratification of an instinct before they can be stimulated to act upon the instinct by a knowledge of the pleasure that will ensue. This sounds logical, but in practice a little performance and a little teaching-a little sense of pleasure and a little connection of tha

"disposition," as so unsatisfactory a word can come to anything. Yet, if we tran

actised, and thus reduced more completely to a matter of routine; but nothing is more certain than that animals acting under the guidance of inherited experience or instinct frequently make mistakes which with further practice they correct. Von Hartmann has abundantly admitted that the manner of an instinctive action is often varied in correspondence with variation in external circumstances. It is impossible to see how this does not involve both possibility of error and the connection of instinct with deliberation at one and the same time. T

esented in another shape-but he implies by his frequent use of the word "unmittelbar" that a result can come about without any cause whatever. So he says, "Um für die unbewusster Erkenntniss, welche nicht durch sinnliche Wahrnehmung erworben, sondern als unmit

(page 107), and elsewhere on cattle and gadflies. The question is not what can they know, but what does their action prove to us that they do know. With each species of animal or plant th

s and working instruments of animals, on the one hand, and those that lead to the formati

ch its race has been conversant for generations; in the second, the seer is supposed to do so. In the first case, a new feature is invariably attended with disturbance of the performance and the awakening of consciousness and deliberation, unless the new matter is too small in proportion to the remaining features of the case to attract attention, or unle

effects; and I gather, though he does not expressly say so, that he considers similarity of instinct in successive generations to be referable to the same cause as similarity of instinct between all the contemporary mem

f a durable philosophy; by which I suppose it is intended to say that if a system or theory deals satisfactorily with animal instinct, it will st