their Creator, we distinguish our spirit from the animal mind forever. To none of these things can that attain. It is incapable either of receiving or comprehending them; and these ennobling powers, and their phenomena, express and illustrate the amazing difference that parts us from our fellow-brutes more impressively than any verbal definitions or descriptive particularity. Their faculties, instincts, and powers are admirable for their class of being, and enlarge our notions of the benevolence, as well as the almightiness, of our common Maker. But they bear no comparison with the transcending capacity, qualities, and achievements of their human masters. The soul of man, indeed, exhibits a greatness, a strength, a penetration, an expansibility, and a creative power, which urge us to inquire if any order of being, except the Divine Source of all that exists, is superior to what the human spirit now is in its essential nature, and will become in its most perfect state."* II. INSTINCT PRECEDES BOTH EXPERIENCE AND REASONING. This is one of the peculiar characteristics of instinct. Take the desire of food. We experience an uneasy sensation which we call hunger, and to remove this seek food. This is common to the infant just born and to the man fully grown. The latter, by the aid of reason, may vary his diet, and to some extent regulate his appetite. The former has neither experience, nor is it capable of receiving instruction; yet, when applied to its mother's breast, all the muscles necessary to obtain food by suction are at once brought into play. No amount of instruction or intelligence could improve upon the process; and yet that process is one of no little difficulty, involving a very complicated use of the muscles of the mouth and throat. Who taught *Sacred History of the World, I, p. 411. the infant that process? Who informed it that the uneasy sensation of hunger would be thus appeased? How did it learn that food was necessary to support life? This peculiarity of instinct is the same in the brute as in the human. The new-born calf needs no instruction to enable him to balance himself on four legs, and to seek the food supplied by his mother. It is said that when a sow is delivered of a litter, each pig as it is born runs at once to take possession of one of his mother's nipples, which he considers as his peculiar property ever afterward.* A brood of ducklings hatched by a hen, as soon as their muscular powers are sufficiently developed, will break away from the hen that acts as mother to them, plunge into the water, and then, without example or instruction, commence swimming about. Who taught them what classes of muscles to use, and how they were to be used in this process? The turtle deposits its eggs in a hole in the sand, where they are hatched by the warmth of the sun. No sooner is the young one hatched than it crawls up through the thin covering of sand spread over it by its mother, and makes in a straight line for the sea, no matter whether in sight or not. Every obstacle is surmounted. The shore once reached, the young turtle dashes into the new element, and disports itself in the waves as though a veteran. There seems to be a double object in this great haste-escape from the birds of prey that haunt the coast, and an innate desire for its native element. Who taught it the peril of remaining upon land? Who instructed the young turtle in its adaptations to the watery element, and how to use its powers then? Its mother left it to its fate while yet a new-laid egg. Nor had it ever seen one of its tribe to be instructed by it, or to take example from it. *Mind and Matter, by Benjamin Brodie, Bart., D. C. L., p. 198. On the bank of a river in Ceylon, Dr. Davy found a young alligator just escaping from its egg, and placed his cane before it to prevent its progress toward the water. The young animal at once assumed an attitude of defense, and bit the stick, manifesting all the wrath and venom of its kind. In the selection of their food there is the same definiteness of action, antecedent to experience and clearly without instruction. Each graminivorous animal makes the selection adapted to its peculiar organization; does it without hesitation; and all the individuals of a species, without concert of agreement and, as it is known to be in many cases, without knowledge of each other's action, selects precisely the same kinds of vegetables. So definite is this, that Linnæus undertakes to give the precise number selected and rejected by the different animal species. He says the cow eats 276 plants, and rejects 218; the goat eats 449, and rejects 126; the sheep eats 387, and rejects 141; the horse likes 262, and avoids 212. We will not vouch for the entire accuracy of this. But something like it is undoubtedly true. And yet it is done without the study of botany, without an analysis of the properties of plants, and also in many cases it is known to be without experience and without observation of the plants eaten by other individuals of the species. The theory adopted by Mr. Darwin and others, that actions, called instinctive, may be traced to experience acquired by various trials and testings, becomes absolutely untenable in the light of these facts. There are indeed facts of this kind, almost without number, that can be explained only on the supposition that "certain feelings exist which lead to the voluntary exercise of certain muscles, and to the performance of certain acts, without any reference at the time to the ultimate object for which these acts Brodie's Mind and Matter, p. 219. are required."* This is the true function of instinct as distinguished from intellect. We would not underrate the value of instinct, nor lessen its achievements. This is not necessary to the end we have in view. Our point is that, so far as the animal is concerned, it acts antecedent to experience and without reasoning. It lacks that essential quality of the human soul which improves its knowledge from experience, and then makes that knowledge the pathway of its reason as it ascends to higher and broader conclusions. The more curious and complicated the processes of instinct, the higher the capabilities it evolves and the more complex the results it secures while yet it acts antecedently to experience and without reasoning-the more wonderful is the display of the wisdom and skill of the Great Architect by whom its nature has been determined and its functions appointed. III. INSTINCT IS NOT INCIPIENT REASON. Animal instinct, upon a superficial view, seems to be a sort of incipient reason, and one is often led to wonder whether, in a new state, and under a different order of things, it will not be developed into an intelligent soul. The idea that prevailed extensively among the ancients that the soul of man existed in the body of some animal, before it entered into its human body and began its permanent life, unquestionably had its origin in this feeling. In this discussion we are to take the animal instinct as it now appears, and to consider its relationship to mind as illustrated by the manifestations of each. Instinct never increases its stock of knowledge, and never improves upon its processes. The beaver builds a no more perfect dam, Brodie's Mind and Matter, p. 199. nor the bee any more perfect cell, than was constructed by the earliest generations of the same. Instinct will not depart from its usual course even to save from destruction. It therefore often, if. not always, acts with a blind disregard of actual results. These obvious and acknowledged facts also distinguish it from the reasoning soul. Water will obey its natural laws, though it deluge a country; so will fire, though it consume a city. There is an unthinking adherence to natural tendency-an inability, in fact, to depart from it, whatever may be the consequences. So it is with the animal instinct; and, in this respect, it seems more nearly allied to the properties of matter than to the faculties of soul. There are, indeed, some things in the history of animal instinct that suggest intelligence and reason. On the part of birds, the building of nests, in which to deposit their eggs; the contrivance to preserve the warmth of the eggs, in order to hatching, as seen in the brooding of the bird over them, and, also, as is affirmed, in changing them alternately from the outer circle to the center, and vice versa, to equalize the proportion of heat to each. In the efforts to protect their young, as when the quail feigns a broken wing, fluttering and bouncing about almost at one's feet, and yet ever out of one's reach, and all the while drawing him away from the place of her young. Birdsnests display striking and varied indications of contrivance, much resembling the reasoning intellect. The oriole forms its nest of long, flexible grass, which is knit or sewed through and through in a thousand directions, as if done by a needle. It was this that made a lady, while looking at the curious workmanship, inquire whether the oriole could not be taught to darn stockings.† The salmon journeys a thousand miles to deposit its Jameson's Note to Wilson, I, 215. Wilson's Ornithology, I, 189. |