and if this power be enough to account for the actions of the ant and the bee, we hardly need seek any other key to the supposed sagacity of the dog and the elephant, as they also possess it, and it governs nearly all their conduct.

But the negative on the other side is more easily supported, and by direct evidence. However it may be with the brute, reason is not united with instinct (properly so called) in man. The human intellect is pure and unmixed. It may be obscured by appetite, or stormed by passion; habit may render its operations so swift and easy, that we cannot note and remember their succession. But when free from these disturbing forces, it acts always with a full perception of the end in view, and by a deliberate choice of means aims at its accomplishment. We have the immediate testimony of consciousness, that we never select means until experience has informed us of their efficacy, and never use them but with a full knowledge of their relation to the end.

Summary of the characteristics of instinct. Each of the qualities of instinct on which I have remarked, is a peculiarity of it in respect to reason, and serves more or less to distinguish it from that faculty; while the aggregate of these peculiarities shows conclusively that the difference between the two is fundamental. This will appear more clearly from a summary of the several points that have been considered. It has been shown, then, that instinct exists before experience, and is wholly independent of instruction; that it is not susceptible of education or improvement of any kind, either in the individual or the race; that it works successfully towards important and remote ends by the use of complex and laborious means, yet without any apparent consciousness of the difference between means and ends; that it acts, in truth, by impulse, and not through reflection, at least, as much so as the man who has gained by habit the power of performing a long operation without reflecting on any part of it; that it is limited to a few objects, and out of the narrow sphere of work required for these objects it is altogether useless; and that, consequently, it appears in the same animal, and at the same time, both as the most brutish

stupidity and as the highest wisdom, for some of its creations shame the greatest ingenuity of man.* As we are confessedly ignorant of the internal constitution of both faculties, reason and instinct, and are compelled to judge of them exclusively by their outward manifestations, it is difficult to conceive of two powers which should appear more unlike.

Beings guided by instinct are not moral beings. It is vain to form conjectures respecting the inward essence, or ultimate cause, of a faculty which appears to human reason so anomalous. Yet one or two points, perhaps, may be satisfactorily made out respecting the mental constitution of brutes, which will afford us a glimpse of the final end of their being. Whether instinct be the mere action of a curious machine, or the effect of the constant agency and promptings of the Deity, or the working of some still more secret principle which is nowhere manifested but in animal life, it is not a free and conscious power of the animal itself in which it appears and works. It is, if I may so speak, a foreign agency, which enters not into the individuality of the brute. The animal appears subject to it, controlled and guided by it, but not to possess and apply it by its own will for its own chosen purposes. We cannot conceive of wisdom apart from reflection and consciousness; there is an absurdity in the very terms of such a statement. The skill and ingenuity, then, which appear in the works of the lower animals are not referable to the animals themselves, but must proceed from some higher power, working above the sphere of their consciousness. This assistance is meted out to them for specific and limited ends, and has no effect on the rest of their conduct, which is governed by their own individuality. In its highest functions, the brute appears only as the blind and passive instrument of a will which is not its own.

"The absolute hereditary nature of instincts, their instant or speedy perfection, prior to all experience or memory, - their provision for the future without prescience of it, the preciseness of their objects, extent, and the distinctness and permanence of their character these are the more general facts on which our definition

and limitation,

for each species,

must be founded.".

Holland's Mental Physiology, p. 201.

"And Reason raise o'er Instinct as you can,

In this 't is God directs, in that 't is man.”

The power is granted to it for a time, but is not susceptible of improvement by practice while in its keeping, is invariably applied in the same way, and with perfect success, and is withdrawn as soon as the purposes for which it was given are answered. No moral character is attributable to a faculty which is unconsciously exerted, and no moral aim can exist where progress or change is impossible. When deprived of this extraneous power, or viewed apart from it, the brute appears in its true light, as the creature of a day, born not for purposes connected with its own being, but as an humble instrument, or a fragmentary part, in the great circle of animated nature, which, as a whole, is subservient to higher ends.*

I hardly need observe how much the phenomena considered in this chapter tend to confirm the doctrine of immediate divine agency. This was the opinion of Sir Isaac Newton, who, in the famous 31st Query, or General Scholium to his "Optics," says, "the instinct of brutes and insects can be nothing else than the wisdom and skill of a powerful, everliving Agent, who, being in all places, is more able by his will to move the bodies within his boundless uniform sensorium, and thereby to form and reform the parts of the universe, than we are by our will to move the parts of our bodies." Even Müller, the physiologist, says, "The cause of instinct appears to be the same power as that on which the first production of the animal, and the perfection of its organization, depend. The instinctive acts of animals show us that this power, which thus forms the whole organization with reference to a determinate purpose and in accordance with an unchanging law, has moreover an action beyond this; they prove that it influences the voluntary movements. That which is effected by the instinctive movements is equally in accordance with a determinate purpose, and as necessary for the existence of the species as the organization itself; but while, in the case of the organization of the being, the object attained formed part of the organism, in the case of the instinctive movements, it is something in the exterior world; the mental power of the animal is incited by the organic creative force to the conception and attempt to attain some special object."

Again, "it is further to be remarked that the realization of the ideas, images, and impulses, thus developed in the sensorium, is admirably facilitated by the organization of the animals. Both the internal impulse

CHAPTER II.

THE PRINCIPLES OF ACTIVITY IN HUMAN NATURE.

Summary of the last chapter. — The object of the last chapter was, by a brief inquiry into the mental constitution of the animals inferior to man, to bring out into a stronger light those peculiarities of human nature which show what is the purpose of our being in this life, and what are the leading features in the scheme of Divine Providence for the government of man. I do not forget that our first object is to show what are the moral attributes of God, and to ascertain if there is sufficient evidence to justify us in imputing to him those qualities of infinite wisdom and benevolence, of perfect justice and holiness, which the religious sentiment within us instinctively requires in the person towards whom it is directed. But these qualities can be manifested to our eyes only in his works and ways; and it is by studying these, that is, by ascertaining what human nature is, how it is endowed, and what is the part which it has to perform in this stage of existence, that we can arrive at any certain and precise knowledge of the Divine nature. Now we are so much accustomed to take for granted a knowledge of the human constitution, both intellectual and moral, it is so much easier to

and the external organization being dependent on the same original cause, the form of the animal appears in complete unison with its impulses to action; it wills to do nothing which its organs do not enable it to do; and its organs are not such as to prompt to any act to which it is not impelled by an instinct." Thus, the indistinct sight of the mole, arising from the smallness of its eyes, which are also shielded by thick hairs, and the shape of its claws and feet, are admirably adapted to the subterranean life which its instincts impel it to lead. The instinct of the sloth urges it to climb trees and live in them, a mode of existence for which it is perfectly well fitted by the shape of its extremities, which allow it to walk on the ground only with great difficulty and awkwardness.

use our faculties in the study of external objects than of the mind itself, that, without some object of comparison or contrast, it is difficult to understand, or, at any rate, to have a clear and lively sense of, those endowments by which we are distinguished among God's creatures, and of the purposes for which these distinguishing attributes were granted to us. We see the work that is accomplished by brutes, and how they are fitted for its performance. We are conscious of the possession of higher faculties than theirs, and we seek to know how our task and our destiny differ from theirs; or whether, in truth, we have any task set to us, or any great end to obtain. The character and intentions of the Deity must appear most clearly from a comparative examination of the two higher orders of animated being which he has made.

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One point I may now assume, as sufficiently established in the First Part of this discussion. It is inconsistent, I do not say with infinite wisdom, for perhaps we are not justified at this stage of the argument in considering any of the attributes of God, except his duration, as infinite, but it is inconsistent with the transcendent wisdom which is everywhere visible in the works of creation, to suppose that any thing was created in vain, or that a difference is established between two orders of being without any reason for that difference. To act with reference to improper or ill-chosen ends, is the part of imperfect intelligence; but to act without any end at all, is mere brutishness, or a sign of the absolute want of understanding. We cannot believe that the creation of man, or the constitution of his being in any respect, is as meaningless as seems the direction of the clouds that float athwart a summer's sky.

Discipline and self-development are the ends of human life.— A comparison of the human with the brute mind shows, first, that self-development is one of the great ends of our being here, and that the fulfilment of this purpose is left in a great degree to our own freewill. It is not enough that the intellect should be competent for its task; the work of preparation, or the act of rendering it competent, is itself the first object for which we are urged to any kind of exertion. Discipline and progress, not