INSTINCT OF INSECTS. 463 



some other authors, that instinct is an immediate and 

 constant impulse of the Deity ; which, to omit other ob- 

 vious objections, is sufficiently refuted by the fact, that 

 animals in their instincts are sometimes at fault, and com- 

 mit mistakes, which on the above supposition could not 

 in any case happen. 



The only doctrine on the subject of instinct requiring 

 any thing like a formal refutation,- is that which, con- 

 tending for the identity of this faculty with reason ia 

 man, maintains that all the actions of animals, however 

 complicated, are, like those of the human race, the re- 

 sult of observation, invention, and experience. This 

 theory, maintained by the sceptics, Pythagoras, Plato, 

 and some other ancient philosophers, and in modern 

 times by Helvetius, Condillac, and Smellie, has been by 

 none more ingeniously supported than by Dr. Darwin, 

 who in the chapter treating on instinct, in the first 

 volume of his Zoonomia^ has brought forward a collection 

 of facts which give it a great air of plausibility. This 

 plausibility, however, is merely superficial ; and the re- 

 sult of a rigorous examination by any competent judge 

 is, that the greater part of Dr. Darwin's facts bear more 

 strongly in favour of the dissimilarity of instinct and rea- 

 son than of their identity : and that those few which seem 

 to support the latter position, are built upon the rela- 

 tions of persons ignorant of natural history, who have 

 confused together distinct species of animals. Thus, 

 because some anonymous informant told him that hive- 

 bees when transported to Barbadoes, vv^here there is no 

 winter, ceased to lay up a store of honey, Dr. Darwin 

 infers that all the operations of these insects are guided 

 by reason and the adaptation of means to an end — a very 



