cond, that little is known, and that little confusedly and untruly; and of the third, that much is practically known, much is declared, much is hoped. Nor is this view a detractive one; for the pride and boast of the current philosophy is, that it rejects the primary and secondary natures in the height here asserted, and makes such portions of them as it cannot help admitting to have some sort of existence, to be mere emanations or unwholesome vapours of the lower nature. It pronounces the human heart "a beautiful hydraulic machine," and thought a secretion of the material brain.'

Thus popular ontological science asserts, that real being is built up of observations made in the actual sphere; the mind is made dependant on the senses, and happiness is supposed to be derivable from the circumstances whereby life is surrounded. How mistaken! As well might the sources be asserted to arise from the stream, instead of the stream from its source, or any other antecedent from its consequent, instead of the latter from the former. While the observations are made so important, the observer, who must be higher than the observations he makes, and antecedent to them, is entirely forgotten. While sensations are allowed thus to displace sensible being, the truth has no secure hold. And so long as happiness is sought in results, it will continue unattained. Happiness is not found among results, but is itself a consequence generated organically of two antecedents, creature and life. Every happy sensation must be below the generators; therefore cannot arise from the circumstances, but is one of them.

The striking characteristic of the active philosophy is that of a total falling down or decadence into the objective sphere, where every thing falls into separation, and the unity is not found. This philosophy makes the organization superior to the organized, and the organized superior to the organizer. It declares that mind is built up of sensible observations; and that mind, in like manner, builds up all that is usually deemed superior to it. The chymist, because he works in matter, says, that his ideas are made by sensible objects striking his senses; and the religionist, because he has the Scriptures in his hand, declares he is to form a judgment of God's Word: both of them reversing the truth, which is, in the first case, that the chymist is the subject operating on his objective chymicals; and, in the latter, that God's Word judges the religionist. The former submits himself, unnecessarily, to a degrading materialism: the latter, having made a deific notion for himself (idea we cannot call it) puts his faith into it, and then, in boastful self-gratulation, affirms that he has faith in God. The higher is by inherency the antecedent or subject; the lower nature always the consequent or object; and our Reform expedients must continually come to nought, so long as they are founded on the negative or objective basis. We see, indeed, how almost universal is the assent to good principles, while good being to realize them is almost wholly wanting. So the case must remain as long as we look to life-lust and busy activity as the source of moral power; to eye-lust and external sight, as the origin of moral intelligence; or to flesh-lust and want-on-ness, or sensual gratification, as the cause of moral happiness.

REFORM, indeed, we do want, or rather a series of new forms,

which common-sense expects not to arise from any action of the old forms; but rather by the Progress-spirit generating the new in a Progress-manner. A crop of ripe wheat is not exactly a reformed dunghill; but a progress wrought by generation, which appears in fresh forms. New social phalanges, or phalansteries, will not be born of a modification of old notions, neither of a knowledge of new principles and practices; but in the submission of the old nature to the regenerative spirit.

PROGRESS, indeed, we do want; but progress does not consist in an improvement of what now is, but in an elevation in being: it is the forthcomingness of something antecedent to present existences. Improvements must be distinguished from Progress. The former consist merely in modal changes, which leave the being, the nature itself untouched. A quill may be improved into a pen, but its nature remains as before. A tree may be sawn into timber, the timber may be carved into statues resembling men; but after all these efforts, a piece of wood it still remains: its inward life and organization are no higher or other than they were previously, unless indeed we consider them with relation to vegetable livingness as much deteriorated. A human being, by education, may be modified from a boor to a scholar; but the natures that would cause him to love the whole human race, and to be at one with all-pervading power, may be as far away as before.

GENERATION is necessary for the incoming of these two natures. They come not by practical reform, for it is a result from them; they come not by a knowledge of theoretical principles, for true principles are their offspring, but from Love, the One Generator.

To sum up, then; while we admit the necessity for Reform, and assert the Progress-Law, we must not fail to remember that both these in their valuable aspect arise by a new generation. Reform we will have; yes; not, however, a form reform, but a Progress-Reform. Progress we will have, it must not, however, be an improvement progress, but a Generation-Progress. Generation we will have; it must not, however, be a self-love generation, but a universe love generation. Thus we omit no proposition for good, but if it can be accepted the German fashion, we would run the threefold idea into one word, and say, we want no less than a Generation progressreform. C. L.

SOME THOUGHTS ON INSTINCT.

INSTINCT has always presented to the definitive mind a rather perplexing subject of definition. So much of our knowledge, under the scholastic or scientific system of instruction, is first brought to us on the verbal side, that nearly one half of our years of tuition is occupied in accepting the definitions of things. By that time, if successful, the mind discovers that definitions are not the things defined; that definitions, though they have a close relation to the words which are used to signify the things, leave it almost as far as ever from a true knowledge of the things signified. The second half of man's tuitionary probation, therefore, consists in the twofold operation of forgetting the

shallow definitions in which he has thus been hand-dabbling, and in endeavouring to plunge into the deeper waters of actual experience, wherein alone is well-founded hope of real knowledge, and of the power either to take or to give a true definition of any of those words or things, so harassing and unsatisfactory to the word-monger and the mere definitionist. No names have more frequently evaded the defining power, (which is by no means a divining power,) than those of genius, conscience, instinct, and the like. With the last mentioned we propose now to deal. A just definition of poetry is no easy matter; perhaps, because the poetic mind, in other respects the best qualified to give it, is the farthest removed from the definition-seeking state; but instinct, which is an inquiry much closer to the practical philosopher, has, it seems, fared no better. Hear the evidence of Lords A. and B. p. 154, of vol. 1, Brougham's Discourses.

"There are no modern books which fully discuss this subject systematically, either as regards instinct or intelligence. One is exceedingly disappointed on consulting our best writers, whether metaphysicians or naturalists, with this view; and the omission is the less to be excused because there are great opportunities of observing and comparing this branch of knowledge is eminently suited to inductive reasoning; we live, as it were, among the facts, and have not only constant facilities for making our experiments, but are in some sort under a constant necessity of doing so." "Yet a physiologist, who also applied himself to the mental part of the inquiry, would be the person best qualified to grapple with its difficulties, and to throw light upon it."

So liberal a confession by so redoubtable a champion of the practical knight-errant lists, is not by us to be gainsayed. The whole host of them, it seems, have wrought in vain. Facts are observed, their records are collected, theories are spun, which again are illustrated by new facts, but all without a valuable result. After such failures, the impertinence of any further attempt, and that, too, in a manner so different as ours would necessarily be, to that above prescribed by his Lordship, must be obvious. For we, in contradistinction to Lord B., think that the road to universal truth is not paved by physiological experiment

Man, as a living, organized being, has in himself instincts enough, without descending to the bee and the ant for an elucidation of the idea. Man, in one point of view, may fairly be defined a bundle of instincts. As these are developed more and more, he more and more becomes man. In the multitude of efforts which have been made to let the world have the benefit of the student's devotion to the subject, the prevailing notion has been to separate and contrast Instinct and Reason. Now there is no necessity so to consider the matter. us, at all events, for once look at it from another point, when it may possibly appear that Reason, so far from being of a nature opposed to Instinct, is only a prolongation, or extension, or elevation, of a like nature, or of the same nature. Begin with the lowest idea of crea tion, the object in the outward world which exhibits the smallest portion of the feeblest instinct. Let it be an instinct so blind and mechanical, that it never was observed to act in the slightest degree

Let

beyond the smallest manifestation attributed to it. An instinct so small it is impossible to confound with reason. This instinct, or faculty, or capacity, say it is merely that faculty manifested in mere inorganic matter, known under the name gravitation. Take it as low as we may, lower and lesser than this, if possible: can the mind hesitate about granting the conclusion, that this faculty or instinct is an exhibition of instinct itself in its eternal, universal, trine life? So then of each and every higher and higher instinct, up to that of the ingenious bee, or the sagacious elephant. All these instincts are so many faculties, or conduit pipes, for the inflowing and the exhibition of universal instinct.

The argument of the unalterable mode in which instinct works, and the variableness of rational operations, may be said to cast a doubt over this view of the matter. But natural philosophy is not without its queries and difficulties on this point. The bee which for six thousand years has built her cell in one uniform manner, does so only under ordinary circumstances; and when these are artificially or violently interfered with, the result is not her destruction, nor the failure of her work; but there is developed another and a new instinctive chord or fibre, by which she is connected with instinct, and naturalists are undetermined whether it partakes more of reason or of instinct. This adaptation to new circumstances, like that process which is called education or training when applied to horses, dogs, &c., need not cause any difficulty in the matter. Each of these fibres or chords, or instincts, is one more added, in manifestation, to those which were observable before. Where, in the mineral, are exhibited two or three instincts; in the lower vegetable, four or five; in the higher, eight or nine; in the animal, ten, twelve, or more; in the rational being are observable fifteen or twenty; in the sympathetic, twenty-five or thirty; in the moral, forty; in the divine, fifty, or whatever number shall be used to exemplify the universal.

Against these sentiments, there will uprise the usual statement, that instinct and rationality are so totally distinct, that they cannot safely be brought under any one designation, that they oppose each other in many respects, above all, in that the nature of instinct is impulsive or blindly generative, while that of reason is calculating and watchfully conscious. That instinct is ignorant action, reason is regulated thought, genius is beneficent sensation. Thus that instinct, as exemplified in the vegetable or animal creation, is, in its several modes, a perfect work; while all that is connected with man, as a moral being, is imperfect.

The facts upon which this inference is founded, are no doubt real, but the inference itself may, for all that, be possibly wrong, especially as there are two branches in the deduction. In the first place, the observer is by no means certain of the perfection, with relation to absolute perfection and absolute instinct, of those instinctive works which are outwrought through the irrational instincts. Their uniformity or monotony, and their utility and beauty, do not demonstrate their perfection, although there is throughout abundant proof offered that those departments of creation are now more in accord and harmony with the designed end, than are the rational and sympa

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thetic instincts as exemplified in man. In the second place, the condition which in instinct is called perfect, and which in man is called rational, arises from the completion rather than perfection of the former. The animal instincts are complete for a certain prescribed and circumscribed end, while the rational, and all other human instincts, being yet progressive, do not, and cannot, exhibit that completeness which is visible in the former. Yet man is no less than the vegetable a bundle of instincts, and as fast as these are, one by one, brought back to their source, instinct, and firmly reunited therewith, those of the moral kind, will be as impulsively and completely acted out, as now are those of the blood circulation, gastric assimilation, or any other of the animal instinctive secretions.

Every animal in its due career is progressed apparently, from instinct to instinct; but more correctly speaking, new instincts are consecutively opened and ripened in it. As the egg instincts are succeeded by the chick instincts, the chick by the hen instincts or faculties, and so forward. It is clearly one design, one creative law, which is thus working out the being, and there are merely so many connexions, more or less in each case, by which the end is attained. The bee and the ant are only more perfect in their instincts than man is, because they are nearer the perfect source or instinct. Permission does not seem to be granted in some of the degrees of instinct to wander from that source, and to such the term instinct would by some minds be confined. But it is as difficult to draw this line as any other. One thing, however, is very clear, that so far as the instincted being is separated from instinct, and is immersed and mixed in with the objects of instinct, so far pain, misery, or destruction, attends such being. When the wasp dips too deep in the treacle basin or the apple juice, which man has contrived for himself, he gets drowned for his sensuality. Now, man, as he is, is too much mixed and at one with the objects of instinct to be entirely instinctively moved. Man as he should be is one with instinct, and is thereby its exhibition upon, and not in subserviency to, the objects of the instincts.

Nor let it be supposed that one of the divisional instincts grows out of another, or rests upon an under one, like the bricks of a house. Each instinct or faculty must be linked with and grow out of instinct itself; which is a centre to all instincts; as animal life is a centre to all animals, and does not permit one animal to grow upon another disconnected with the life centre.

Nor dare we properly separate the instincts from consciousnesses and sensations of a corresponding degree. Animals can most undoubtedly feel, and though it be with only an animal feeling, it is no less real than the mental; and from all that can be observed, the field of consciousness in the lower animals is just as extensive as, or indeed is correlative with, the instinctive nature. The three are in fact a trine or one. And as is the number of instincts, or the degree of instinct, manifestly present in any one department of creation, so is the degree of feeling, and the depth of consciousness. We have no more right to deny a vegetable consciousness to a tree, than the vegetable feelings or the vegetable instincts. So, as man understands his instinct position, he will discover that the more in