MS 1343 (1902) - Of the Classification of the Sciences

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all putting of one thought with another, all adding to a doctrine, purpose, habit, or performance of what seems fitting to perfect it, whether this be voluntary and rational or, as we say, "instinctive." This use of the word is perfectly correct: instinct is opposed to reason; and yet we cannot even reason except at the suggestion of instinct. Reasoning and deliberation are the workings of the grouping instinct; but this product of this special instinct may in some measure supplement and almost replace every other instinct, so general is it.

The Garb-instinct is that element of human nature which causes the sensuous and unintentional expression and blossoming of the soul. It manifests itself in clothing, in fine raiment, in personal adornment, in vanity and pretension, in coats of arms, titles, pedantry, insolence, subtle impertinence, excessive ceremony, fashion, and a thousand other shapes.

The Graphic Instinct is the disposition to work energetically with ideas and to make them up. An idea awake is an idea expressed, either outwardly or in imagination.

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A drowsy idea is a half-conscious one; a sleep-walking idea is a subconscious one. An idea sound asleep is no more nor less than an idea unexpressed in any way. This instinct has two varieties. The one is the instinct of the teacher who burns to inculcate and propagate ideas with which he is entirely satisfied. The other variety is the instinct of the artist who endeavors to awaken and bring to expression ideas that strike him forcibly yet that he cannot easily seize. It is a sort of Blindman's Buff.

The Gnostic instinct is the disposition to look beyond the ideas themselves to their upshot and purpose, which is the truth. It manifests itself as scientific curiosity, and scientific research. It looks upon the idea as that which alone has worth in all creation. When it is said that God looked upon his work that it was good, that is [the] tone of the idea He saw in it. Not that mere contemplation can

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be adequate to embracing an idea. An idea is a thing to be lived.

Let us now briefly review this list of instincts to see whether there seems to be enough truth in the classification to make it worth acceptance until something better be found. There are thinkers who will demur to the whole thing and refuse to enter upon any examination of it. They include those who are more or less sceptical about all attempts at natural classification and also those who are given to repeating the shibboleth that the mind has no faculties. Both positions are varieties of nominalism. Nominalism is that kind of philosophy which takes the perfectly sound maxim called "Ockham's Razor,"—Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem—that is, a hypothesis ought not to introduce more elements than are requisite for explaining the facts,—

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and remodels it, so as to convert it from a maxim of procedure into a positive dogma. The existence of natural classification has been considered above so far as there is room here to consider it. To those who repeat that the mind has no faculties, we may reply: We have said nothing about the mind: we have not used the word; so that it is open to you to employ it in such a sense that it shall be true that the mind has no faculties, if there be any such sense; and it will not concern us at all. If you mean to say that animals have not a plurality of instincts, that question can be discussed provided it can be defined so as [to] be a question of observable fact. Take ants. Their general mode of life is much like that of termites and of bees, and is utterly unlike those of squids, monkeys, or even of spiders. But the type of civilization among different kinds of ants, though identical in a general way, presents most striking varieties. Some ants store

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up honey. The rest do not. The same is true of bees; but the method of storing honey prevalent among the bees, in combs, is singularly different from that employed by ants, who gorge a class of the community with it and hang them up to be made to disgorge as desired. Other ants are farmers, others are slaves, etc. Now barring metaphysics, what falsity is there in saying that the ants, all of whom lead a city life their population divided into various trades, have, some of them, special instincts not developed in others? But these differences are so much like the differences between different men, that terms of human vocations are unavoidably used in describing them. A human farmer is very nearly if not quite as incapable of successfully following the life of a human slaver, and vice versa, as the two kinds of ants are of interchanging their habits. Honeybees under certain circumstances change their habits, and even give up storing honey, which must revolutionize their society.