170 An Inquiry respecting the true Nature of Instinct . 



in the acts of a Fencer or of a player on the Piano-forte, as in 

 those of the Mathematician ? the slightness of our attention to the 

 minute aots we perform, is surely no proof that such acts are not 

 effected by an intelligent power. 



There is indeed, in the intelligence of the highly-disciplined 

 mind, an habitual endeavour or action against the inroads of what 

 in the man who possesses it, is most analagous to Instinct, namely, 

 his corporeal appetite ; restraining and guiding it, and keeping it in 

 due subordination: and this from impressions of truth not directly 

 referred to in the conscious operations of the mind, at the moment 

 in which such habitual action takes place, but operating as it 

 were, tacitly and instantaneously. Yet who will say that such ha- 

 bitual action is not caused by an active and powerful intelligence. 

 The powers of intelligence in Man appear indeed to be capable 

 of operating in different modes, all of which are essentially rational 

 in themselves. 



Human intelligence is formed by the Faculty oi Intelligence im- 

 planted within, digesting truth as it is received from without ; but 

 this intelligence may be, and is, successively modified as an active 

 power; as much so as any of those other powers to which this term 

 has, as I conceive, been improperly limited : the most sublime 

 efforts of reasoning form but the ordinary principles of minds 

 disciplined in truth and virtue. For it is evident, that all the 

 modes of operation of intelligence itself, cannot be included in the 

 tardy processes of analysis and synthesis. Those processes are 

 but modifications of the faculty of intelligence. Immediate 

 action is equally predicable of intelligence : our inability to 

 trace a reflective process in certain actions, is therefore no proof 

 that such actions are not the results of intelligence ; if this were 

 not the case, and if a cogitative process were the only test of 

 the workings of intelligence, many actions, not habitual, might 

 be argued to be as non-intellectual as those of habit : — actions 

 in which, nevertheless Intelligence is most conspicuous, being 

 the results of what is on this very account emphatically styled Pre- 

 sence of Mind. In that instantaneous operation of the mind, in 

 which action follows like the lightning's flash, without any percep- 



