On Animal Instinct: in its Relation to the Mind of Man. 3-13 



we may be said partially to overpass iu the very act of becoming con- 

 scious of them. We see it to be a great law prevailing in the instinct*' 

 of the lower animals, and in our own, that they are true not only a 

 guiding the animal rightly to the satisfaction of whatever appetite is 

 immediately concerned, but true also as ministering to ends of which 

 the animal knows nothing, although they are ends of the highest im- 

 portance, both in its own economy, and in the far-off economies of 

 creation. In direct proportion as our own minds and intellects par- 

 take of the same nature, and are founded on the same principle of 

 adjustment, we may feel assured that the same law prevails over their 

 nobler work and functions. And the glorious law^ is no less than 

 this— that the work of Instinct is true not only for the short way it 

 goes, but lor that infinite distance into which it leads in a true 

 direction. 



I know no argument better fitted to dispel the sickly dreams of the 

 Philosophy of Nescience. Nor do I know of any other conception as 

 securely founded on science, properly so called, which better serves to 

 render intelligible, and to bring within the familiar analogies of Na- 

 ture, even those highest and rarest of all gifts which constitute what 

 we understand as inspiration. That the human mind is alw'ays in 

 some degree, and that certain individual minds have been in a special 

 degree, reflecting surfaces, as it were, for the verities of the unseen 

 and eternal world, is a conception having all the characters of coher- 

 ence which assures us of its harmony with the general constitution 

 and course of things. 



And so, this doctrine of animal automatonism — the notion that the 

 mind of Man is indeed a structure and a mechanism — a notion which 

 is held over our heads as a terror and a doubt — becomes, when closely 

 scrutinized, the most comforting and reassuring of all conceptions. 

 No stronger assurance can be given us that our faculties, when rightly 

 used, are powers on which w'e indeed rely. It reveals what may be 

 called the strong physical foundations on which the truthfulness of 

 reason rests. And more than this — it clothes with the like character 

 of trustworthiness every instinctive and intuitive affection of the hu- 

 man soul. It roots the reasonableness of faith in our conviction of the 

 Unities of Nature. It tells us that as we know the instincts of the 

 lower animals to be the index and the result of laws which are out of 

 sight to them, so also have our own higher insticts the same relation 

 to truths which are of corresponding dignity, and of corresponding 

 scope. 



Nor can this conception of the mind of Man being inseparably con- 

 nected with an adjusted mechanism cast, as has been suggested, any 



