Mr Wilson entitles the chapter which treats on this subject ‘The Promethean Instinct: Fire.’ The next chapter is headed ‘The Maritime Instinct: the Canoe.’ Then we have ‘The Technological Instinct,’ and so on. Why this ostentatious use of the term Instinct? Did men hunt after fire even before they had seen it, as an animal might be supposed to hunt after food even before it had eaten? Do men build canoes as birds their nests or beavers their dams? What is the leading idea of Mr Wilson when he thus liberally applies to us the term Instinct? We have desires and we have intelligence suggesting means to an end. Is it the desire that is instinctive, or the apprehension of the means whereby the desire can be gratified? Men have a desire to pass from one side of the river to the other; perhaps the animal they were in chase of has swam the stream; they have observed that wood will float, that a large piece of wood will float with a man on it; they procure such piece of wood, and paddle themselves across. The knowledge which the man displays in all this follows from his previous perceptions. Perception, memory, judgment, are all exercised in a quite normal manner, and the desire to float across the stream has arisen from the peculiar circumstances in which the man was placed. What element of mystery is there in this transaction which calls for the name of Instinct? For the word Instinct is applied to certain actions of animals because the ordinary laws of psychology are, or seem, inadequate to explain them—because a certain mystery hangs over the event which we mark by the name Instinct. When we see animals acting, without the teaching of experience, in the same sort of way in which we act after that teaching of experience, we, perplexed to explain this anomaly, pronounce the action instinctive. The bee and the bird build in this inexplicable manner. Probably a more minute investigation may enable us to resolve whatever we call Instinct into some delicacy of the senses, or some rapidity of the judgment, peculiar to the animal. Meanwhile the term is serviceable as marking a class of unexplained phenomena. But how is it applicable to man in his capacity of boat-builder? The sort of canoe he will build, the materials he will use, the tools he will work with, are all determined for him by existing circumstances, and the actual amount of his knowledge. Or is it the vague desire to put to sea, prompting some manner of boat-building, that Mr Wilson calls our “maritime instinct?” Are we driven to sea like ducks to a pond? The peasantry of an inland country are not conscious of any such instinct, and would be very unfortunate if they possessed it.