OF ARTS AND SCIENCES. 83 



The answer to these last two questions has been confused, or ren- 

 dered difficult, chiefly because the answer to the first has been left 

 vague and indeterminate. So long as the word Instinct is vaguely used 

 to designate all the mental endowments of the brute, be they what they 

 may, — and so long as the word Intellect is used with equal vagueness 

 to designate all the mental endowments of man, be they what they may, — 

 so long it will be impossible to draw a sharp line of distinction between 

 the two, or to say that the two are never conjoined in the same being. 



What, then, are the mental endowments which belong in common to 

 man and the brute, but which are not entitled to be called either In- 

 stinct in the one case, or Intellect in the other ? The following are at 

 least some of them, perhaps all. 



Appetites ; propensities, including blind or involuntary imitation ; 

 affections ; memory, and simple imagination, or the power of calling up 

 mental pictures of individual material objects, both being manifested in 

 the dreams of dogs ; simple association, — as when a gesture or a rod 

 suggests to an animal the pain of a previous whipping ; and judgment 

 in its simplest form or lowest function, resulting from the direct com- 

 parison of one material thing, observed at the moment, with another, — 

 as when dogs and cats judge correctly the height or distance which 

 they can safely leap, or the size of the orifice that will admit the pas- 

 sage of their bodies. 



Neither Intellect nor Instinct is necessary for the action of the appe- 

 tites, impulses, or affections ; though one or the other is needed to 

 obtain the means of gratifying them, and to control them, or to keep 

 down their action when their demands are inordinate or obstructive to 

 the attainment of some higher end. Though these impulses are deter- 

 minate, or point to certain objects to the exclusion of others, such de- 

 termination is not the result of comparison and deliberate choice, such 

 as is exercised by the Intellect ; but it is the necessary result of the 

 constitution of the being in whom certain propensities are implanted to 

 the exclusion of others. Neither Instinct nor Intellect causes the de- 

 termination to one kind of food rather than another, or the preference 

 of one class of sounds to another ; we can only say, that the palate and 

 the auditory nerve are so constituted as to give pleasure in the one 

 case, and pain or disgust in the other. Such preferences and dislikes 

 are no more indications of thought and purpose on the part of the ani- 

 mals which feel them, than is the persistent pointing of the magnetic 

 needle to the poles, when compared with the indifference of unmagnet- 



