262 MENTAL CONSTITUTION OF ANIMALS. 



The faculties above described the elements of the mental 

 constitution are seen in mature man in an indefinite potenti- 

 ality and range of action. It is different with the lower 

 animals. They are there comparatively definite in their power 

 and restricted in their application. The reader is familiar 

 with what are called instincts in some of the humbler species, 

 that is, an uniform and unprompted tendency towards certain 

 particular acts, as the building of cells by the bee, the storing 

 of provisions by that insect and several others, and the con- 

 struction of nests for a coming progeny by birds. I can regard 

 this quality as nothing more than a mode of operation peculiar 

 to the faculties in a humble state of endowment, or early stage 

 of development. The cell -formation of the bee, the house- 

 building of ants and beavers, the web-spinning of spiders, are 

 but primitive exercises of construe tiveness, the faculty which, 

 indefinite with us, leads to the arts of the weaver, upholsterer, 

 architect, and mechanist, and makes us often work delightedly 

 where our labours are in vain, or nearly so. The storing of 

 provision by the bees is an exercise of acquisitiveness a faculty 

 which with us makes rich men and misers. A vast number 

 of curious devices, by which insects provide for the protection 

 and subsistence of their young, whom they are perhaps never 

 to see, are most probably a peculiar restricted philo-progeni- 

 tiveness. The common source of this class of acts, and of 

 common mental operations, is shown very convincingly by the 

 melting of the one set into the other. Thus, for example, the 

 bee and bird will make modifications in the ordinary form of 

 their cells and nests when necessity compels them. Thus the 

 alimentiveness of such animals as the dog, usually definite with 

 regard to quantity and quality, can be pampered or educated 

 up to a kind of epicurism, that is, an indefiniteness of object 

 and action. The same faculty acts limitedly in ourselves at 

 first, dictating the special act of sucking ; afterwards it acquires 

 indefiniteness. Such appears to be the real nature of the dis- 

 tinction between what are called instinct and reason, upon 

 which so many volumes have been written without profit to 

 the world. All faculties are instinctive, that is, dependent on 

 internal and inherent impulses. This term is, therefore, not 

 specially applicable to either of the recognised modes of tha 

 operation of the faculties. We only, in the one case, see the 

 faculty in an immature and slightly developed state ; in the 

 other, in its most advanced condition. In the one case it is 

 definite, in the other, indefinite, in its range of action. These 



