ON THE LATEST FORM OF THE DEVELOPMENT THEORY. 119 
sage of its body. But they cannot judge by inference, or through the intervention of 
a third term; that is, they cannot reason. They cannot generalize their experience, 
and thus form premises from which many conclusions can be drawn. Their judgment, 
as intuitive, is always of the particular case presented to their senses, and never as an 
inference from a general rule. The only end which they can pursue, or even contem- 
plate, apart from the guidance of instinct, is particular and immediate, dictated by the 
appetite or impulse of the moment. Hence, they cannot combine means for the attain- 
ment of a future or general object, and thus their modes of operation are never altered 
or improved. 
Instinct is the power given to compensate for these deficiencies, which would other- 
wise be fatal to life or destructive of the species. It appears as a substitute for reason, 
not as a lower degree of it; it answers the same purpose, but by totally different 
means. Instinct is the performance by an animal of some act (the construction of a 
nest or cell, or the laying of a stratagem for catching its prey) which man could not 
perform without intelligence or reason, properly so called; that is, without experience 
or instruction, the observation of effects, the induction of a rule or law from them, 
and the consequent future choice and adaptation of means to ends. This act the 
animal demonstrably performs without either experience or instruction, but just as 
blindly as the bird tucks its head under its wing when going to sleep, without knowing 
why. The act does tend to some usÉful end, though the animal knows not of it. 
Foresight it has none, unless it be the foresight of a god rather mes a man ; for human 
prescience is nothing but the reflectión of the past upon the mirror of the future. 
Neither reason nor instinct supplies an object of endeavor, but only points out the 
means of attainment, the former relying exclusively upon experience, the latter appear- 
ing, at least to human observation, to be guided by inspiration. A blin pupung 
induces the duckling to take to water ; instinct teaches it how to — The tiigri- 
tory bird is urged by a vague impulse at the proper season to change " country ; og 
stinct turns its flight in the right direction. Surely it would be no improvement in 
either of these cases, no development of a higher faculty out of a tower one ot the 
same kind, if reason were substituted for instinct, the — «es — teachings of 
experience for the instantaneous and unerring guidance of inspiration. That power or 
faculty, call it what we may, bears not the remotest semblance of human reason Parm 
teaches a wasp, born only after the death of its pans, = q. up food of a kiia 
which it never uses for itself, for the use of its young which it is never to see. i P 
a propensity nor an appetite is an instinct, though all three are equally blind. For 
