On Animal Instinct : in its Relation to the Mind of Man. 327 



tions of ite constructor. If that constructor be himself limited, either 

 in opportunity, or knowledge, or in power, there will be a corresponding 

 limitation in the things which he invents and makes. Accordingly, 

 in regard to man, he cannot make a machine which has any of the 

 gifts and the powers of life. He can construct nothing which has 

 sensibility or consciousness, or any other of even the lowest attributes 

 of living creatures. And this absolute destitution of even apparent 

 originality in a machine — this entire absence of any share of conscious- 

 uess, or of seusibility, or of will — is one part of our very conception of 

 it. But that other part of our conception of a machine, which consists 

 in its relation to a contriver and constructor, is equally essential, and 

 may, if we choose, be sejxirated from the rest, and may be taken as 

 representative of the whole. If, then, there be any Agency in Nature, 

 or outside of it, which can contrive .and build up structures endowed 

 with the gifts of life, structures which shall not only digest, but Avhich 

 shall also feel and see, which shall be sensible of enjoyment from 

 things conducive to their welfare, and of alarm on account of things 

 which are dangerous to the same — then such structures have the same 

 relation to that Agency which machines have to Man, and in this 

 aspect it may be a legitimate figure of speech to call them living 

 iuachines. What these machines do is different m kind from the 

 things which human machines do ; but both are alike in this — that 

 whatever they do is done in virtue of their construction, and of the 

 powers which have been given to them by the mind Avhich made them. 

 Applying now this idea of a machine to the phenomena exhibited by 

 the young Dipper, its complete applicability cannot be denied. In the 

 first place the young Dipj)er had a physical structure adapted to 

 <iiving. Its feathers were of a texture to throw off water, and the 

 ?<hower of pearly drops which ran off it, when it emerged from its first 

 plunge, showed in a moment how different it was from other fle'Iglings 

 in its iraperviousness to wet. Water appeared to be its " native 

 element" precisely in the same sense in which it is said to be the 

 native element of a ship which has been built high in air, and of the 

 not very watery materials of wood and iron. Water which it had 

 never seen before seemed to he the native element of the little bird in 

 this sense, that it was so constructed as to he and to feel at home in it 

 at once. Its " lines '' had been laid down for progression both in air 

 and water. It was launched with a motive power complete within 

 itself, and with promptings sufficient for the driving of its own 

 machinery. For the physical adaptation was obviously united with 

 mental powers and qualities which partook of the same pre-adjusted 

 harmony. These were as congenital as the texture of its feathers or 



