On Animil Instinct: in its Relation to the Mind of Man. 341 



the instincts of the lower animals ; and this for the best of all reasons, 

 that we ai-e ourselves animals, what<3ver more; — having, to a large 

 extent, precisely the same instincts, with the additional power of look- 

 ing down upon ourselves in this capacity from a higher elevation to 

 which we can ascend at will. Not only are our bodily functions pre- 

 cisely similar to those of the lower anin\als, — some, like the beating of 

 the heart, being purely " automatic" or involuntary— others being 

 partially, and others again being wholly, under the control of the 

 will,— but many of our sensations and emotions are obviously the same 

 with the sensations and emotions of the lower animals, connected with 

 precisely the same machinery, presenting precisely the same phenom- 

 ena, and recognizable by all the same criteria. 



It is true that many of our actions become instinctive and mechani- 

 cal only as a result of a previous intellectual operation of a self-con- 

 scious or reasoning kind. And this no doubt is the origin of the dream 

 that all instinct, even in the animals, has had the same origin ; a 

 dream due to the exaggerated "anthropomorphism" of those very phi- 

 losophers who are most apt to denounce this source of error in others. 

 But Man has many instincts like the animals, to which no such origin 

 in previous reason can be assigned. For not only in the earliest 

 infancy, but throughout life, we do innumerable things to which we 

 are lead by purely organic impulse ; things which have indeed a reason 

 and a use, but a reason which we never know, and a use which we 

 never discern, till Ave come to " think." And how different this pro- 

 cess of " thinking" is we know likewise from our own experience. In 

 contemplating the phenomena of reasoning and of conscious delibera- 

 tion it really seems as if it were impossible to sever it from the idea of 

 a double Personality. Tennyson's poem of the "Two Voices" is no 

 poetic exageration of the duality of which we are conscious when we 

 attend to the mental operations of our own most complex nature. It is 

 as if there were within us one Being always receptive of suggestion, and 

 always responding in the form of impulse— and another Being capable 

 of passing these suggestions in review before it, and of allowing or dis- 

 allowing the impulses to which they give rise. There is a profound 

 difference between creatures in which one only of these voices speaks, 

 and Man, whose ears are, as it were, open to them both. The things 

 which we do in obedience to the lower and simpler voice are indeed 

 many, various, and full of a true and wonderful significance. But the 

 things which we do, and the affections which we cherish, in obedience 

 to the higher voice, have a rank, a meaning, and a scope which is all 

 their own. There is no indication in the lower animals of this double 

 Personality. They hear no voice but one ; and the whole law of their 



