But do they do it willingly and deliberately, or is their action a mere instinct which they are powerless to control?

(His mere instinct prompts him to deny his suffering altogether, or to endure it in silence.)

When the Bayderac came to our plane, they told us our Way was mere instinct and that we lived like animals.

This indicates that elephants have the highest amount of learning to undergo next to humans, and behavior is not mere instinct but must be taught throughout life.

In short, Barnaby being an idiot, and Grip a creature of mere brute instinct, it would be very hard to say what this gentleman was.

In her writings, Howard argued that individual intelligence, and not mere instinct, is a factor in much of bird behaviour.

Could we have misread mere specialized instinct as intelligence?

If he'd left his decisions to mere human instinct, he would have had more tendency to lash out at the things that made him angry and frustrated.

That could be mere instinct.

And here Amalu, at no man's bidding, from the mere instinct of habitual service, built a fire and cooked a meal.