eternal happiness. If it should indeed be found to be insufficient, it might be fair to inquire what principle it is, by whose operation and influence man is brought to a nearer acquaintance with his Maker, instructed in his duties, and enabled to perform them..

For most of the facts I am to produce, relative to the instinct of animals, I shall be indebted to several writers on Natural History and Physiology.

Des Cartes, with some other philosophers, imagined that all the actions of the lower animals might be explained by the simple laws of mechanism. Hence he considers them as machines wholly devoid of life and sentiment, like a clock or orrery, but so curiously constructed by the Creator, that the mere impressions of light, sound, and other external agents on their organs of sense, produced a series of motions in them, and caused them to execute those various operations which had before been ascribed to an internal principle of life.

Buffon partly adopts the opinion of Des Cartes, but admits the brute animals to have life, and the faculty of distinguishing between pleasure and pain, together with a strong inclination to the one, and aversion to the other. By these inclinations and aversions he undertakes to account for all, even the most striking operations of animals.

Other philosophers, as Helvetius and Darwin, have endeavoured to show that most of the actions of brutes were performed by a process of reasoning analogous to that in man.*

*Rees Cyclop. Art. Instinct.

In a new system of Natural History of Animals, published at Edinburgh in 1791, it is laid down that "the laws of analogical reasoning do not justify the opinion, that the brutes act, on any occasion, absolutely without design." And, on the other hand, it has been maintained by Smellie, in his Philosophy of Natural History; "that between reason and instinct there is no difference, and that the reasoning faculty is itself the necessary result of instinct."

Some have considered that a material structure, or simple arrangement of organs, endowed with the principle of life, or living organic structures possessing vital properties, give rise to all the phenomena of which we see the brutes to be capable; and that it is not necessary to have recourse to a principle which they affirm to be mysterious and inexplicable like that of Instinct : and others, as I before stated, in attempting to raise the dignity of human nature far above the brute, without giving themselves any trouble to analyse their respective actions, have thought to establish the grand distinction, by assigning exclusively to man the faculty of Reason, and exclusively to the brute, the blind or unerring principle of Instinct.

We may perhaps find that all these philosophers have pushed their conclusions too far, by attempting to generalise too much; and while we are almost compelled to smile at some of their notions, we cannot but believe that some of them erred in seeking to mark distinctions between the structure and nature of the

human and the brute animal, without knowing much, if any thing, more, either of one or the other, than was to be learned by their respective actions.

For, the principle in matter by which a stone falls to the ground, and the principle in mind, by which a living organized intelligent being thinks and acts, as in man, are equally unknown. Consequently, all the principles or modifications of action, between these extremes, in minerals, vegetables, insects, reptiles, fishes, birds and beasts, are entirely hidden from our keenest search. So that Gravitation, Crystallization, Vegetation, Irritability, Sensation, Instinct, &c. are words used to denote certain effects, the causes of which we are ignorant. It is therefore vain to agitate metaphysical questions about diversities or similitudes, which depend more upon our own words than upon any clear knowledge we can have of the things we define; as, whether brutes differ from man in degree or in kind, whether there be an essential distinction between the rational and animal nature, and whether a being capable of subduing all, is only raised a single step above one or two of the higher species of brutes ;-inquiries better fitted for scholastic exercises, (about which much may be said, and but little can be known,) than for the improvement of knowledge.

The observations of Smellie on this point, though he has drawn conclusions on others which can scarcely be admitted, are worth our attention.

"It cannot," says he, "escape observation that all

the sagacity and laborious industry exerted in the various instances of animal architecture, have one uniform tendency. They are all designed for the multiplication, protection, and nourishment of offspring. But many of them are so artful, and require such persevering labour, that the human mind is bewildered when it attempts to account for them. Recourse has been had by Des Cartes, Buffon, and other philosophers, to conformation of body and mechanical impulse. Their reasonings, however, though often ingenious, involve the subject in tenfold obscurity. We can hardly suppose that the animals actually foresee what is to happen, because, at first, they have not had even the aid of experience; and particularly in some of the insect tribes the parents are dead, before the young are produced. Pure instincts of this kind, therefore, must be referred to another source. In a chain of reasoning concerning the operations of nature, such is the constitution of our minds, that we are under the necessity of resorting to an ultimate cause. What that cause is, it is the highest presumption in man to define. But, though we must for ever remain ignorant of the cause, we are enabled to trace, and even to understand, partially, some of the effects; and from these effects we perceive the most consummate wisdom, the most elegant and perfect contrivances, to accomplish the multifarious and wonderful intentions of nature. In contemplating the operations of animals, from man down to the seemingly most contemptible insect,

we are necessarily compelled to refer them to pure instinct, or original qualities of mind, variegated by nature according as the necessities, preservation, and continuation of the different species require. Let any man try to proceed a step farther, and, however he may deceive himself, and flatter his own vanity, he must find at last that he is clouded in obscurity, and that men who have a more correct and unprejudiced mode of thinking, will brand him with absurdity, and acting in direct opposition to the constitution and frame of the human mind." *

SECT. II.

Instinct contrasted with Reason.

On surveying the actions of Men and Brutes, there seem to be sufficient logical grounds for making two grand distinctions; the one, comprising those actions which appear to be done blindly or without premeditation and without experience; and the other, those which are done with forethought by combining means to accomplish ends, which are often the result of individual or social experience and instruction.

These general facts seem to be so obvious, that they lead us at once to call them by different names, and to conclude that they arise from different pro

*Sce Philos. of Nat. Hist. vol. ii. p. 118.