338 On Animal Instinct: in its Relation to the Mind of Man. 



which affirms this coiTespondence to be real — a unity which constitutes 

 and guarantees the various senses, each in its own sphere of adapted 

 relations, to be exact and faithful interpreters of the truth. 



Nor is it the least wonderful and striking proof of the trustworthi- 

 ness of Nature to observe how far-reaching these interpretations are : 

 how they are true not only in the immediate impressions they convey, 

 but true also as the index of truth which lie behind and beyond, but 

 which are not expressly included in either sensation or perception. 

 This, indeed, is one main function and use, and one universal charac- 

 teristic, of all sense-impresssions, that over and above the pleasure they 

 give to sentient creatures, they lead and guide to acts which are in 

 conformity with the requirements of the natural laws — these laws not 

 being themselves objects of sensation at all — being, on the contrary, 

 truths which the creatures most concerned in the requisite conformity 

 being obeyed cannot themselves either feel or comprehend. It is thus 

 that the ai:>petite of hunger and the sense of taste, which in some form 

 or other, however low, is perhaps the most universal sensation of ani- ^ 

 mal organisms, is true not only as a guide to the substances which do 

 actually give rise to the appropriate pleasure derivable from the sense 

 concerned, but true also in its unseen and unfelt relations with those 

 profound and still mysterious correlations of force which render the 

 assimilation of new material an indispensable necessity in the mainte- 

 nance of animal life. 



The wonderful instincts of the lower animals, the precision and per- 

 fection of their work, is a glorious example of the accurate adjustment 

 between the rudimentary perceptions of mind and the laws which pre- 

 vail in the external world. Narrow as the sphere of those perceptions 

 may be, yet within that sphere they are almost absolutely true. And 

 although the sphere is indeed narrow as regards the very low and lim- 

 ited intelligence with which it is associated in the animals themselves, 

 it is a sphere which beyond the scope of that intelligence can be seen 

 to place them in unconscious relation with endless vistas of co-ordinated 

 action. The sentient actions of the lower animals involve not merely 

 the elementary perception of the differences which distinguish things, 

 but the much higher perception of those relations between them which 

 are the foundation of all voluntary agency, and which place in the 

 possession of living creatures the power of attaining ends through the 

 employment of appropriate means. The direct and intuitive percep- 

 tion of the necessity of doing one thing in order to attain to another 

 thing, is in itself one of the very highest among the pre-adjusted har- 

 monies of Nature. For it must be remembered that those relations 

 between things which render them capable of being used as means to 



