IX. THE EMOTIONS IN THEIR RELATION TO INSTINCT X. SOME HABITS AND INSTINCTS OF THE PAIRING SEASON HABIT AND INSTINCT. CHAPTER I. PRELIMINARY DEFINITIONS AND ILLUSTRATIONS. THE naturalist commonly uses the word "habits" in describing the activities and behaviour of animals, each after his kind. Having given some account, for example, of the external form and internal structure of beast or bird or insect, he proceeds to deal with its habits, its general mode of life-how it seeks its food, how it rears or makes provision for its young, and so forth. The habits of animals thus constitute a wide and interesting field for observation and study. The word is, however, often used in a more restricted sense. In speaking of human beings, we generally use the word "habit" to describe some action or mode of behaviour which results from repetition in the course of individual experience. We should not speak of an act that is only occasionally performed under special circumstances as a habit. In employing the word “habit ” as a technical term for purposes of scientific description, it is expedient to adopt this restriction. In this sense a habit is a more or less definite mode of procedure or kind of behaviour which has been acquired by the individual, and has become, so to speak, stereotyped through repetition. There can be little objection, however, to the concurrent use of the word in its broader and more general acceptation; Вв and when it is so employed in this work, the context will, it is hoped, serve to make the meaning clear and to prevent misapprehension. Still, wherever it is so used there will be implied, at least, some element of that individual acquisition and repetition which gives to habit, in the narrower and more restricted sense, its salient characteristic. The word "instinct," too, is used in daily conversation and in popular speech with a signification somewhat wider and less restricted than that which attaches to it as a technical term. In the first place, it is commonly employed to distinguish broadly the doings of animals from the ways of man. The former are said to be due to instinct, while the latter are described as rational. But not all the ways, not even all the thoughts, of man are rational. And thus, in the second place, the word "instinct" is used in describing that part of human character and conduct which is not the outcome of a consciously rational process. The man who acts without deliberation is said to do so instinctively; the girl who shrinks, she knows not why, from the companionship of some of her schoolfellows, is guided, it is said, by her natural instincts. These two uses are closely connected. There is in both a common antithesis to rational; in both a reference to something deeply ingrained in the nature. And each is serviceable, seldom giving rise to misapprehension, since the meaning is sufficiently defined by the context. But for use as a technical term, we need further precision. The difference between a word as employed for the daily purposes of familiar conversation or in general literature, and the same word in its usage as a technical term, is this: that in the former case it is in itself freer and more mobile, being, in its usage, moulded to definiteness by the context of the passage in which it occurs; while in |