nical machines, they might as well whip the sands, halloo to the waves, and whistle to the winds. Under this view of the subject all instinctive actions were of course referred to a principle of body, or gross tangible matter, not endowed with peculiar or exclusive properties; and wherever any thing of the same description was to be found among mankind, it was instantly separated from all connexion with intelligence, and referred to the same source. The incongruities accompanying this hypothesis have not, however, prevented other philosophers from following it to a certain latitude in modern times, although it has been seldom, perhaps never of late days, pursued to the extent contended for by Des Cartes. The ideas of Dr. Reid, who has expressly written upon this subject, do not appear to be very perspicuous: yet he obviously espouses the doctrine of a mechanical principle of animal actions; and the actions which are resolvable into this principle are, in his opinion, of two kinds-those of instinct, and those of habit. Instinct is with him, therefore, as well as with Des Cartes, a property of body or gross matter alone, unendowed with any peculiar powers, and merely operated upon by a combination of mechanical forces. II. In direct opposition to this corporeal hypothesis, Mr. Smellie and Dr. Darwin have contended that instinct is altogether a mental principle, the brute tribes possessing an intelligent faculty of the very same nature as mankind, though more limited in its range. From this point, however, these two physiologists disagree, and fly off in opposite directions: the former contending that reason is the result of instinct, and the latter that instinct is the result of reason. In the promptitude and perfection with which the newborn infant seeks out and sucks its mother's breast, Dr. Darwin asserts that, although the chain of thought which directs it to the accomplishment of its object is concealed from the view, it still exists; and he endeavours to follow it up and develope it;† in which, however, it is not worth while to accompany him, for the whole process, even upon his own showing, is so complex, that it would rather require the genius of an adult Newton to unfold it, than yield to the dawning powers of a new-born infant. I will just observe, that in various cases of the instinctive faculty the most excursive theorist cannot picture to his imagination any thing like a chain of thought, or previous reasoning; any thing like habit or imitation, by which the means and the end are joined together. Let us take, as an example, the very common instance of a brood of young ducks brought up under a hen, and contrary to all the instincts and feelings of the foster-mother, plunging suddenly into the water, while she herself trembles piteously on the brink of the pond, not daring to pursue them, and expecting every moment to see them drowned. By what kind of experience or observation, by what train of thought or reasoning has the scarcely fledged brood been able to discern that a web-foot fits them for swimming, and that a fissured foot would render them incapable?—a knowledge that mankind have only acquired by long and repeated contemplation, and which has never been fully explained to this hour. Mr. Smellie defines instinct to be "every original quality of mind which produces feelings or actions, when the proper objects are presented to it."-Philos. of Nat. Hist. vol. i. p 155. So, p. 159, "From the above facts and reasonings, it seems to be apparent that instincts are original qualities of mind; that every animal is possessed of some of these qualities; that the intelligence and resources of animals are propor tioned to the number of instincts with which their minds are endowed; that all animals are, in some measure, rational beings; and that the dignity and superiority of the human intellect are necessary results, not of the conformation of our bodies, but of the great variety of instincts which nature has been pleased to confer on the species." In p. 156 he, in like manner, confounds mind with sensation, as he has above confounded instinct with mind. "Sensation," says he, "implies a sentient principle or mind. Whatever feels, therefore, is mind. Of course, the lowest species of animals are endowed with mind." It ought to have been first proved that the lowest species of animals are even endowed with sensation. "By a due attention to these circumstances, many of the actions, which at first sight seemed only referrible to an inexplicable instinct, will appear to have been acquired, like all other animal actions that are attended with consciousness, by the repeated efforts of our muscles under the conduct of our sensations or desires."-Zoonom. Lect. xvi. 2, 4. "If it should be asked, what induces a bird to sit weeks on its first eggs, unconscious that a brood of young ones will be the product? the answer must be, that it is the same passion that induces the human mother to hold her offspring whole nights and days in her fond arms, and press it to her bosom, unconscious of its future growth to sense and manhood, till observation or tradition have informed her "-Darwin, seet. 13, 4. Habit, imitation, and instruction would all concur in teaching them to flee from the water, as a source of inevitable destruction: and yet, in opposition to all these influences and premonitions, we see them rush into it, and harmlessly we see them obeying an irresistible impulse, which directs them to what is fitting, stamped in the interior of their little frames, and which is equally remote from the laws of mind and of mechanism. In like manner, by what process of imitation, education, or reasoning does the nut-weevil (curculio nucum) seek out exclusively, and with the nicest knowledge of the plant, the green hazel in the month of August, while its nut-shell is yet soft and easily penetrable? What past experience or course of argument instructs her that this is the fruit best adapted, or perhaps only adapted, to the digestive powers of her future progeny? With a finished knowledge of her art, as soon as she is prepared to deposite her eggs, she singles out a nut, pierces it with her proboscis, and then, turning round accurately, drops an egg into the minute perforation; having accomplished which, she passes on, pierces another nut, drops another egg, and so continues till she has exhausted her entire stock. The nut, not essentially injured, continues to grow. The egg is soon hatched; the young larve or maggot finds its food already ripened and in waiting for it; and about the time of its full growth, falls with the mature nut to the ground, and at length creeps out by gnawing a circular hole in the side. It then burrows under the surface of the ground, where it continues dormant for eight months, at the termination of which time it casts its skin, commences a chrysalis of the general shape and appearance of the beetle kind, and in the beginning of August throws off the chrysalid investment, creeps to the surface of the ground, finds itself accommodated with wings, becomes an inhabitant of the air, and instantly pursues the very same train of actions to provide for a new progeny which had been pursued by the parent insect of the year before. In all such cases it is clear that there is a principle implanted in the living form equally distinct from all mechanical, chemical, and rational powers, which directs the agent by an unerring impulse, or, in other words, impels it by a prescribed and unerring law, to accomplish a definite end by a definite means. Such instinctive powers are not only allowed upon Mr. Smellie's hypothesis, but are conceived to be almost innumerable; and reason, instead of giving birth to them, is, in his opinion, as I have already observed, the general result of them, and consists in the power of comparing one instinct with another, and assenting to those that preponderate. According to this hypothesis, all the actions of the involuntary organs of the body are so many instincts, as pulsation, digestion, secretion; all natural feelings are so many instincts, as love of life, dread of death, and the desire of progeny; all the passions are so many instincts, as fear, hope, envy, benevolence, reverence, superstition, devotion; and hence life is nothing more than a bundle of instincts; and reason, which is itself founded upon an instinctive principle, consists, as I have just observed, of nothing more than a power or tendency to compare the different strengths of these antagonist forces whenever they are brought into a state of action, and to be guided by those that are prepollent; or that offer what is felt or conceived to be the best means of obtaining a proposed end. The objections to which this hypothesis is exposed, or rather the evils chargeable upon it, are innumerable; but it is sufficient to observe, at present, that it as effectually confounds the separate faculties of instinct and reason as the preceding hypothesis of Dr. Darwin, and, conse quently, that neither of the two opinions are in any respect more admissible than those which refer the instinctive faculty to a mechanical principle, or, in other words, to the common properties of unorganized matter. III. There is a third class of philosophers, who, sensible of the difficulty of the case, have endeavoured to get over it by contending that instincts are of a mixed kind: that they either originate in a power which holds an inter • Transact. of the Royal Society of Edinb. vol, v. p. 39. mediate nature between matter and mind; or else are in some instances simply material, and in others simply mental. The very excellent and learned Cudworth belonged to the first of these two divisions, and may be regarded as having taken the lead in the scheme which it developes. I have already observed, in a former study, that this profound metaphysician was so strongly attached to the Platonic theory of the creation of the world, that he strove, with the full force of his mighty mind, to restore this theory to general vogue. And as it was one important principle in this theory that incorporeal form, or an active and plastic nature, exists throughout the world independently of pure mind and pure matter, and that the last is solely rendered visible and endowed with manifest properties by a union with this active intermede, Cudworth conceived that all instinctive powers might be satisfactorily resolved into the operation of the same secondary energy in proportion as it pervades the universe. In opposition to which doctrine, however, it is sufficient to remark, that as the existence of all visible matter, whether organized or unorganized, upon the leading prin ciple of the Platonic theory, is equally the result of this plastic power, and produced by a union with it, it should follow that unorganized matter ought occasionally at least to give proofs of an instinctive faculty, as well as matter in an organized state; proofs of definite means to accomplish a definite end, and that end the general weal, preservation, or reproduction of the body exhibiting it. But as, by the common consent of all mankind, no such faculty is ever to be traced in unorganized matter, it cannot be referred to a princi ple which is equally common and essential to all visible matter, whether under an organized or an unorganized modification. At the head of the second division of the last class of philosophers to whom I have referred, we may perhaps place M. Buffon; who, incapable of acceding altogether to the mechanical hypothesis of Des Cartes, yet not choosing to allot to animals below the rank of man the possession of an intelligent principle, kindly endowed them with the property of life, which Des Cartes had morosely withheld by contending that they were mechanical machines alone, and very obligingly allowed them to possess a faculty of distinguishing between pleasure and pain, together with a general desire for the former and a general aversion for the latter. And having thus equipped the different tribes of brutes, he conceived that he had sufficiently accounted for the existence of instinctive actions, by leaving them to the operation of this distinguishing faculty upon the mechanical properties of their respective organs. M. Reimar, however, an ingenious German professor, who flourished towards the close of the last century, did not conceive in the same manner: and hence, in a work immediately directed to the instinct of animals, and published at Hamburgh in 1769, he divides the actions which he apprehends ought to pass under this name into thrce classes-mechanical, representative, and spontaneous: by the first intending all the proper actions of animal organs over which the will has no control, as the pulsation of the heart, the secretion of the various fluids, and the dilatation of the pupil; by the second, those which depend upon an imperfect kind of memory, and which, so far as it is memory, brutes enjoy in common with mankind; and by the third, those which originate from M. Buffon's admitted faculty of distinguishing pleasure from pain, and the desire consequent upon it of possessing the one and avoiding the other. It is, however, a sufficient answer to both these opinions, which in truth are founded upon one common basis, that, like the theories of Darwin and Smellie, they equally confound, though in a different manner, powers that are essentially distinct. The founders of these opinions may, with Darwin and Smellie, derive the instinctive faculty from a principle of mind, or with Des Cartes and Dr. Reid from a principle of body; but they have no right to derive it from both, or to contend that its different ramifications originate in some instances from the one source, and in others from the other: though, as • Intellect. Byst. 1743 I have already observed, if they do derive it from mind alone, they will be compelled to admit its existence in a thousand cases in which not a single attribute of mind can be traced; while, if they derive it from body alone, they offer a cause that is inadequate to the effect produced. M. Cuvier has taken a ground still different from any of these philosophers. He has not, indeed, expressly written upon the subject, but in a very accurate description of a somewhat singular ourang-outang,* he sufficiently unfolds his opinion, that instinct consists of ideas which do not originate from sensation, but flow immediately from the brain, and are truly innate. His words are as follows: "The understanding may have ideas without the aid of the senses; two-thirds of the brute creation are moved by ideas which they do not owe to their sensations, but which flow immediately from their brain. Instinct constitutes this order of phenomena: it is composed of ideas truly innate, in which the senses have never had the smallest share." There is a perplexity in this passage, which I am surprised at in the writings of so exact a physiologist: it first confounds instincts with ideas, as other philosophers have confounded them with feelings; and next affirms that ideas may flow from the brain without the aid of the external senses. That "the understanding may have ideas without the aid of the senses," I admit; but then it cannot have them from the brain, this being the very foundation and fountain of the senses; that from which they rise, and that in which they terminate. The understanding may, undoubtedly, have ideas from the exercise of its own proper powers alone, but this can only be the case with pure intellectual beings, and to assimilate the faculty of instinct with a faculty of this exalted character, is to clothe brutes with endowments superior to those of mankind; it is to elevate the ourang-outang above an Aristotle or a Bacon. Hence M. Dupont de Nemours, in an article read before the National Institute in 1807, advises to drop the term instinct altogether, as the only means of avoiding the rocks on some of which every writer has shipwrecked himself. He asserts, that there is in fact no such thing in existence; and that every action which has hitherto been described under such name is the mere result of intelligence, of thought, habit, example, or the association of ideas. But this is only to revive, in a new form, the theory of Darwin or of Smellie; while it is only necessary to advert to the explanatory examples offered by M. Dupont himself, to see that many of them are utterly incapable, by any ingenuity whatever, of being resolved into a principle either of intelligence or of mechanism.t Nothing, therefore, is clearer than that the principle of instinct has hitherto never been explicitly pointed out, nor even the term itself precisely defined it has been derived from mechanical powers, from mental powers, from both together, and from an imaginary intermediate essence, supposed equally to pervade all imbodied matter, and to give it form and structure. It has been made sometimes to include the sensations, sometimes the passions, sometimes the reason, and sometimes the ideas: it has sometimes been re stricted to animals, and sometimes extended to vegetable life.‡ Annales du Museum et d'Hist. Nat. tom. xvi. p. 46. † Magazine Encyclopedique, Feb. 1807, p. 437. Dr. Hancock has lately published a very elaborate volume upon this subject, in which he takes a just view of the instinctive powers of animals, and is half-disposed to allow the same faculty to plants. But in merely distinguishing this faculty from reason, in the same way in which he distinguishes what have hitherto been called innate principles, a moral sense or faculty, light of nature, divine reason, as contradistinguished from human reason, spiritual power, internal teaching, and even impulse and inspiration of the Holy Spirit, all which he contemplates as intelligences of a like kind, or, to adopt his own words, which we can only regard as an EMANATION of Divine Wisdom," he has so completely generalized the subject, not to say apparently blended into a common principle powers which have usually been regarded as specifically discrepant from each other,--even allowing the existence of the whole of them, and that they all flow, as in such case they must necessarily do, from the same almighty Source of being,-that the peculiar nature of the instinctive faculty is left in as much obscurity as ever. Dr. Hancock has trodden over an extensive ground of both physical and metaphysical research, and the excellent spirit with which he writes entitles him to the esteem of every good man. Yet I am at a loss to determine why the principle of reason, or the reasoning soul in man, should not have as fair a claim to originate from the divine energy that pervades every part of nature, from the minutest atom to the highest spiritual afflation, as the faculty of instinct. By throwing, however, the principle of human reason out of the general pale, and by associating instinct with the high alliances just adverted to, the "unconscious intelligence," as Dr. Hancock has denominated it of the lowest part of the animal creation, even that of insects Under these circumstances I shall beg your candid attention to a new view of the subject, and a view that may tend to give us a more definite idea of the nature of the action, and consequently of the extent and real meaning of the term. In an early lecture of the preceding series* I endeavoured to point out the common or essential, and many of the peculiar, properties of inorganic matter; and in a subsequent study† I attempted to lay down the more prominent characters by which inorganic is distinguished from organic matter, as a stone, for example, from a plant or an animal. I observed that, on investigating the history of the stone, it would be found to have been produced fortuitously; to have grown by external accretion, and only to be destructible by chemical or mechanical means: while, on investigating the history of the plant or the animal, it would be found to have been produced by generation; to have grown by nutrition, or internal instead of external accretion; and to be destructible by death; to be actuated by an internal power, and possessed of parts mutually dependent, and contributing to each other's functions. I observed farther, that in what this internal power consists we know not; that in plants and animals it appears to be somewhat differently modified, but that wherever we meet with it we term it the PRINCIPLE OF LIFE, and characteri e the individual substance it actuates by the name of an organized being, from its possession of organized parts, in contradistinction to all those substances which are destitute as well of life as of internal organs, and which are hence denominated unorganized. Upon another occasion I took a brief survey of the chief theories which have been offered upon the nature of this mysterious and fugitive essence : which I observed was altogether a distinct principle from that of thought, and from that of sensation, for both these must also be kept distinguished from each other. I remarked, that in modern times it had at one period been said to be derived from caloric, thermogen, or the elementary matter of heat, as it exists in the organized system, from the well ascertained importance of this substance (if it be a substance) towards the perfection, and even continuance, of all the vital functions: that at another time it was, for the same reason, supposed to consist of oxygen introduced into the system by every act of inspiration; and still more lately of the Voltaic aura, in consequence of those wonderful effects which this aura is now well known to produce on the muscular fibres of animals, not only during life, but often for some hours after death has taken place. I remarked farther, that Mr. John Hunter had traced this living principle to many of the organized fluids, as well as to the solids; and that he had especially developed it in the blood, which, coincidently with the Mosaic declaration, he believed to be its immediate seat. "The difficulty," observes he, " of conceiving that the blood is endowed with life while circulating, arises merely from its being a fluid; and the mind not being accustomed to the idea of a living fluid." And I observed, that by a variety of important and well-defined experiments, this enterprising and indefatigable indagator had succeeded in proving, not only that it contributes in a greater degree to the vital action and to the vital material of the general system than any other constituent part of it, whether solid or fluid, but has all the essential properties of life; that it is capable of being acted upon, and contracting, like the muscular fibre, upon the application of an appropriate stimulus, as atmospheric air, for example; on which occasion it becomes constringed into that cake or coagulum which every one must have heheld in blood drawn from the arm: that in all degrees of atmospherical temperature, of heat or cold, which the body is capable of enduring, it maintains an and worms, is raised to a loftier and diviner rank than the peculiar principle by which man has hitherto been supposed to exercise a dominion over the rest of creation. "In the lowest order of animals," says Dr. Hancock, "the divine energy seems to act with most unimpeded power. It is less and less concentrated in the successive links of the living chain upward to man.-The lowest animal has this divine power, not of free choice, nor consciously: the IEST of men has it also, but consciously and willingly and it then be comes his ruling principle; his divine counsellor; his never-failing help; a light to his feet, and a lantern to his path."-Essay on Instinct, and its Physical and Moral Relations, p. 170-513 ⚫ Series 1. Lecture iv. 1 Series 1 Lecture 1. † Series 1. Lecture viii. alt at ic th |