We find on page 114 that “all instinctive actions give us an impression of absolute security and infallibility”; that “the will is never weak or hesitating, as it is when inferences are being drawn consciously.” “We never,” Von Hartmann continues, “find instinct making mistakes.” Passing over the fact that instinct is again personified, the statement is still incorrect. Instinctive actions are certainly, as a general rule, performed with less uncertainty than deliberative ones; this is explicable by the fact that they have been more often practised, 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. The fact is simply this—when an animal finds itself in a like position with that in which it has already often done a certain thing in the persons of its forefathers, it will do this thing well and easily: when it finds the position somewhat, but not unrecognisably, altered through change either in its own person or in the circumstances exterior to it, it will vary its action with greater or less ease according to the nature of the change in the position: when the position is gravely altered the animal either bungles or is completely thwarted. * * * * * Not only does Von Hartmann suppose that instinct may, and does, involve knowledge antecedent to, and independent of, experience—an idea as contrary to the tendency of modern thought as that of spontaneous generation, with which indeed it is identical though presented 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 unmittelbar Besitz_,” &c. {144a} Because he does not see where the experience can have been gained, he cuts the knot, and denies that there has been experience. We say, Look more attentively and you will discover the time and manner in which the experience was gained. * * * * *