chain of animal existences, the sensitive apparatus which they possess in common with the human species, are found to be gradually less perfectly developed, and less adapted for receiving a great variety of impressions, or of leading to nice distinctions of idea. The hoof of a horse is familiarly known to be less adapted to the transmission of sensations of tact than the paw of a dog. Here, then, is a point of divergence of the greatest importance to comparative ideology. The immense influence of the sense of touch upon the poverty or riches of the intellect is a common-place fact in the science of mind. The vast difference in the fineness of sensation, between man and man, which arises through the influence of labour upon the cuticle, is sufficient to indicate the still wider separation which must subsist between animals having by nature a different organization of the seat of tactile sensibility. The comparative intelligence of carnivorous and ruminating animals, depends much upon this cause; and the finesse of the elephant (an animal nearly allied in general structure to others remarkable for confined intellectual powers, and possessing a brain relatively small and ill-developed) may be safely concluded to arise from the sensitive perfection of its proboscis.

The delicate sensibility of the auditory nerves in hares and in horses, exerts a remarkable influence upon their intellectual character, and conspires to develope that timidity by which they are so eminently characterized.

The operation of sensibility in producing volition is effected through the passions and appetites. The number and force of these propensities is connected with the developement and combination of certain of the viscera, so that every combination of organs has its definite mainsprings, or passions, resulting in part through the influence of each separate organ, and in part perhaps from the combined effect of the whole*.

The influence of these causes upon the intellect is great; for on the one hand, their existence, placing the individual in more immediate contact with external nature, multiplies the number of its possible affections, and indirectly increases the stock of ideas; while, on the other, it affords motives for the mind to re-act upon itself, in order to estimate impressions, and combine means for ef

* Bichat.

fecting the objects to which the passions give importance. The lowest classes of animals are principally governed by the appetite of hunger; their ideas must roll chiefly upon the materials of their nutrition. Being few in number, their ideas must admit of but few combinations, and give rise to but few judg ments. Volition, thus acting within a limited sphere, and being modified by a paucity of coincidents, must, upon the inere doctrine of chances, produce its effects with a constancy and a regularity truly monotonous. The law of geome trical progression will give some idea of the vast variety of possible actions, which may result from the operation of each new tendency upon a long series of ideas, and vice versa, of a new idea upon a being actuated by many passions. Yet, the conduct of man being susceptible of calculation, however coarse, and reducible to a regularity however gene ral, there is little ground for surprise at the uniformity observable in animals of a simpler construction.

With the existence of sexual distinction arises a new train of impressions, which, after those connected with the stomach, are the most general and the most influential. In those animals in whom the sexual organs are subject to periodical orgasm, the influence of the passion upon intellect is rendered apparent by considerable deviations from their usual habits and modes of action. The ungovernable fury of the bull and of the stag at the epoch of orgasm must be connected with a flow of ideas, and a perception of relations, to which at other times they are wholly insensible.

Fear and rage are powerful sources of the actions of animals: many species seem governed by these uneasy feelings through the whole of their apparently miserable being.

Hope is an affection more limited in its sway; because it implies a wider range of ideas, and a susceptibility to many different impressions. Sporting dogs, in their search after game, cannot be strangers to its impulses.

Emulation and ambition, being developed only in social life, are strictly confined to gregarious animals. The wild bull, when he places himself in the front of attack to defend the herd; the monkey and the parrot, when they stand sentinels in the predatory excursions of the flock, must act from a sense of their force or dexterity, and are most probably urged to action by this passion

of the well-organised.

however, is still more manifest in the race-horse.

The existence of any considerable number of passions or appetites, implies a susceptibility to a great variety of sensitive impressions, which must afford the materials for numerous acts in which memory, imagination, and judgment, become more or less conspicuous. In proportion, therefore, as organization is developed and approaches to that of the human being, the intellectual character of the animal will more nearly resemble that of man, and its actions be more susceptible of latitude and of variety.

But by far the most effectual agent in complicating the phenomena of mind is found in the sympathetic feeling, or that gregarious passion which compels the animal to combine its movements with those of others of the same species. The moment two individuals feel and act together, the adoption of signs for mutual communication becomes essentially necessary, and nature has accordingly afforded a common medium of intelligence to all animals that she has subjected to this mode of existence. The immediate consequence of the connexion of an idea with a sign we know to be an increase of permanence and of distinctness in the idea, and therefore a greater clearness respecting its relation with other ideas, and a greater actual number of such relations. The grega rious animals which live under the dominion of man, and receive their food at his hands, are exempted from the necessity of putting forth all the powers of mind of which they are thus render ed capable. But these powers become abundantly obvious in the superior intelligence of their untamed congeners. Beavers and the migrating birds exhibit many traces of intellectual power arising from this cause; and even ants, wasps, and bees, are not altogether exempted from its influence, though, from the difference of their organization, their symbology is less susceptible of appreciation by man. It is by the close intercourse which dogs maintain with the human species, and by their adoption of many signs suggested by their master, that they attain to their very extraordinary developement of intellect; by which they are enabled to reason with precision, and, in the vulgar yet most accurate phrase," to do all but speak."

The close and immediate dependence of man upon the rest of his species, the long and helpless infancy to which he

The influence of the fugitive signs of oral communication upon the human intellect is so much the more difficult to appreciate, as we can scarcely imagine the species deprived of the assistance of this auxiliary. But a faint approximation may be obtained by the comparison which history offers between the nations which have, or have not improved this instrument, by the adoption of perma nent signs for their ideas; or have given a greater or less developement to such systems of representation. If we compare the unlettered savages of ancient Germany and the native tribes of North America with the Peruvians, Mexicans, Egyptians, Chinese, Greeks, and modern nations since the invention of printing, there may be traced in every instance a fixed and determinate modi fication of mental power, accompanying each successive step of improvement in the art of permanent expression. How vast is the difference observable between the lawless, artless, comfortless societies of warring and wandering tribes, the slowly progressive civilization of the Greeks, the stationary profitless demicivilization of the Chinese, and the rapid developement of every useful and interesting science which has succeeded the invention of the press! But if such vast and immeasurable modifications of intellect are attached to small improvements in symbolical systems, how narrow must be the limits of intellectual power in the total absence of those sys

a capricious determination under any given contingency. It is from an observation of these differences also that phi losophers have fallen upon the distinction of reason and instinct, as if in the most refined train of reflection, the movements, sensorial and muscular, did not derive in ultimate analysis from the specific mobility of the percipient, and were not as strictly proportioned to their causes, as any other animal effect.

The faculties of perception and locomotion existing for a certain specific purpose, should the harmony of the two systems in which they reside be imperfect in its details, that purpose could not be effected; and it is because original constitution, disease, habit and prejudice, in various ways interrupt this har mony, and produce deceptions as to the value of trifling impressions, and the real connection of the present with the future, that mankind so often are rendered miserable, and are cut short by the effects of their own voluntary re-actions. The basis of this harmony between the sensative and muscular systems, is that each sensation should produce a congruous re-action according to its connection with the well-being of the machine: all actions whatever are therefore instinctive, that is, determined by the nature of the organization, and the interference of consciousness or of volition, in the ordinary sense of the word, is a merely accidental difference. If the impression be single, preponderatingly strong, or connected with the immediate discharge of an important function, the action occurs so obviously by mere mechanism, that it cannot be mistaken. If it be, on the contrary, feeble, opposed to other impressions, or have a motive tendency connected with an object remote from the organization, its effect must necessarily vary according to every possible variation in the coincident circumstances. The motive force of such impressions depending upon combinations affecting the moral rather than the physical being, consciousness and volition become necessary links in the chain of causation; but they interfere merely to determine the value of the impressions, which impressions then impel to action immediately, necessarily, and by an operation that utterly escapes our scrutiny.

Nothing, it is true, can be more difficult than to conceive by what process the sensation excited in a new-born babe by the effluvia of the female breast should impel the infant to take the nipple in its mouth, and so to arrange its

muscles as to cause the pressure of the atmosphere to effect a gush of milk. The infant can neither know any thing of the existence and properties of the fluid, of the effect of a partial vacuum, nor even of the consequence of a certain disposition of the mouth. So also it is impossible to imagine by what impulsion the child is induced to make those precise muscular movements which produce deglutition before experience has taught the pleasure of swallowing; but it may be doubted whether the influence of the motives of voluntary actions, in which volition is accompanied by a consciousness of end, are susceptible of clearer explanation.

The sole difference that can be established between instinctive and rational action, is that one proceeds from a single stimulus, and that the other results from a combination of many impressions. Hence actions, in many cases, pass from one to the other of these supposed classes, and change their nature according to accident. The first inspiration, the first deglutition, are instinctive; all the subsequent ones may be voluntary. When man is assailed, he wards off the blow, and returns it instinctively; because the nature of the excitement is such as to preclude the operation of any minor impression; but if the fight continue, he deliberately performs the same movements under the guidance of what skill he may possess, because the ideas of self-defence are called forth, which render such a mode of action necessary; but if his blood become heated by the painful impression of the blows he receives, these impressions again are rendered paramount, and his scientific notions fade before the strong desire of revenge; his movements thus become disordered, and cease to be under the guidance of the judgment or the will.

So

The power, then, of giving series and unity to action, of subordinating the present to the future, derives immediately from a susceptibility to many, various, and slight impressions. It is therefore a necessary consequence of an high developement of sensitive power, and does not necessarily imply the introduction of a new piece into the mechanism. closely indeed do these phenomena depend upon the degree of sensitive delicacy, that they vary in different individuals, and in the same person at different times, according to variations in the cultivation of language and mind, and according to differences in health and sickness, and in the occasional

sense.

obtusity or keenness of the organs of In those trains of action which are the most decidedly voluntary, and produced by the balance of many conAlicting impressions, the value of the motives derives immediately from the relative organic force of the passions; and the same animal acts differently under the same contingencies, according to every variation in the balance of its appetites and propensities. Whatever then be the determination to which it arrives, the action is an expression of the physical condition of the agent, or, in other words, is instinctive. To estimate, therefore, the actions of an animal with precision, we should previously be acquainted with its whole or ganization, and with the influence of the structure upon the volition. This, however, is scarcely possible with regard to those species whose formation differs very widely from our own. But it is precisely from the actions of animals of this description, that inferences have been drawn in favour of the existence of a principle of movement opposed to reason; and thus it happens that the boldness of conjecture rises in the exact proportion of our real ignorance.

In concluding this long and somewhat desultory paper, it may perhaps be necessary to say something respecting

the tendency of the inquiry. Too many efforts have been made to connect alt investigations of mind with definite opinions in religion. Nothing, however, can be more futile than the notion of this influence of philosophy upon matters of belief. In succeeding to prove that the mechanism of the body is sufficient to explain the phenomena of mind, we merely establish the fitness of that body to become the habitation of an immortal soul, and verify in another instance that harmony which is always to be pre-supposed in the works of the Divinity. The existence of the soul rests not upon arguments of physiology, and to fix it upon that basis, serves only to subject the dogma to all the difficulties and doubts incidental to physiological questions; the wisdom of such a system, both in a moral and a theological point of view, is more than problemati cal. "Talking," says Locke of rea soners of this cast, "talking with a supposition and insinuations that truth and knowledge, nay, and religion too, stands and falls with their systems, is at best but an imperious begging the question, and assuming to themselves, under the pretence of zeal for the cause of God, a title to infallibility."Essays, vol. ii. p. 148. (note.)

C.

LITTLE did the authors of the Spectator, the Tatler, and the Guardian think, while gratifying the simple appetites of our fathers for periodical literature, how great would be the number, and how extensive the influence, of their successors in the nineteenth century. Little did they know that they were preparing the way for this strange era in the world of letters, when Reviews and Magazines supersede the necessity of research or thought—when each month they become more spirited, more poignant, and more exciting-and on every appearance awaken a pleasing crowd of turbulent sensations in authors, contributors, and the few who belong to neither of these classes, unknown to our laborious ancestors. Without entering, at present, into the enquiry whether this system be, on the whole, as beneficial as it is lively, we will just lightly glance at the chief of its produc

tions, which have such varied and extensive influences for good or for evil.

The Edinburgh Review-though its power is now on the wane-has perhaps, on the whole, produced a deeper and more extensive impression on the public mind than any other work of its species. It has two distinct characters

that of a series of original essays, and a critical examination of the new works of particular authors. The first of these constitutes its fairest claim to honourable distinction. In this point of view, it has one extraordinary merit, that instead of partially illustrating only one set of doctrines, it contains disquisitions equally convincing on almost all sides of almost all questions of literature or state policy. The "bane and antidote " are frequently to be found in the ample compass of its volumes, and not unfrequently from the same pen. Its Essays on Political Economy display talents