468 INSTINCT OF INSECTS. 



pulse of the Deity ; which, to omit other obvious ob- 

 jections, is sufficiently refuted by the fact, that animals 

 in their instincts are sometimes at fault, and commit 

 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 in 

 man, maintains that all the actionsof 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 Helvetiiis, Condillac, and Smellie, has been 

 by none more ingeniously supported than by Dr. Dar- 

 win, who in the chapter treating on instinct, in the 

 first volunje oi Zoononia, has brought forward a collec- 

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

 This plausibility, however, is merely superficial ; and 

 the result of a rigorous examination by a competent 

 judge is, that tbe greater part of Dr. Darwin's fact«» 

 bear more strongly in favour of the dissimilarity of in- 

 stinct and reason than of their identity : and that those 

 few which seem to support the latter position, are 

 built upon the relations of persons ignorant of natural 

 liistory, who have confused together distinct species of 

 animals. Thus, because some anonymous informant 

 told him that hive-bees when transported to Barba- 

 does, where 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 just inference, if the state- 



