ON INSTINCT IN MAN AND ANIMALS. 203 



antennae contains thousands of nerve-fibres, which 

 terminate in small open cells, and this Mr. Lowne 

 believes to be the organ of smell, or of some other, 

 perhaps new, sense. It is quite evident, therefore, 

 that insects may possess senses which give them a 

 knowledge of that which we can never perceive, and 

 enable them to perform acts which to us are incom- 

 prehensible. In the midst of this complete ignorance 

 of their faculties and inner nature, is it wise for us 

 to judge so boldly of their powers by a comparison 

 with our own ? How can we pretend to fathom the 

 profound mystery of their mental nature, and decide 

 what, and how much, they can perceive or remem- 

 ber, reason or reflect! To leap at one bound from 

 our own consciousness to that of an insect's, is as 

 unreasonable and absurd as if, with a pretty good 

 knowledge of the multiplication table, we were to 

 go straight to the study of the calculus of functions, 

 or as if our comparative anatomists should pass from 

 the study of man's bony structure to that of the fish, 

 and, without any knowledge of the numerous inter- 

 mediate forms, were to attempt to determine the homo- 

 logies between these distant types of vertebrata. In 

 such a case would not error be inevitable, and would 

 not continued study in the same direction only render 

 the .erroneous conclusions more ingrained and more 

 irremovable. 



Definition of Instinct. 

 Before going further into this subject, we must 



