I suggested, then, that the instinctive situation afforded new factors which were assimilated to the existing experience of the moorhen.

It may be said, however, that there are no new factors ; there are only old factors grouped in a new way ; the new experience of diving, it may be urged, is only a modification of the old experience of swimming.

This I am quite ready to admit ; nay more, I have myself stated my belief that this is so 1.

What is new is the whole net result coalcscent into one felt situation.

Shall we say that while much of the matter may have been previously presented under other " forms," what is here new is the " form " of the situation as a scare-begotten dive ? But why apply to this form the term " instinctive " ? My reply to this question is simple and direct, and goes to the very heart of the problem ; because this particular form of behaviour exhibited by the moorhen on the occasion of its first dive is dependent as such on how the nervous mechanism has been built up through heredity under that mode of racial preparation which we call biological evolution ; because this particular form is not determined as such by previous experience.