INSTINCTS. 181 



heat, gives not a more certain evidence of design. So, 

 again ; when a male and female sparrow come together, they 

 do not meet to confer upon the expediency of perpetuating 

 their species. As an abstract proposition, they care not 

 the value of a barley corn whether the species be perpetu- 

 ated, or not. They follow their sensations ; and all those 

 consequences ensue, which the wisest counsels could have 

 dictated, which the most solicitous care of futurity, w^hich 

 the most anxious concern for the sparrow world, could 

 have produced. But how do these consequences ensue? 

 The sensations, and the constitution upon which they de- 

 pend, are as manifestly directed to the purpose which we 

 see fulfilled by them ; and the train of intermediate effects, 

 as manifestly laid and planned with a view to that purpose, 

 that is to say, design is as completely evinced by the phe- 

 nomena, as it would be, even if we suppose the operations 

 to begin, or to be carried on, from what some will allow to 

 be alone properly called instincts, that is, from desires di- 

 rected to a future end, and having no accomplishment or 

 gratification distinct from the attainment of that end. 



In a word ; I should say to the patrons of this opinion. 

 Be it so ; be it, that those actions of animals which we re- 

 fer to instinct, are not gone about with any view to their 

 consequences, but that they are attended in the animal 

 with a present gratification, and are pursued for the sake of 

 that gratification alone ; what does all this prove, but that 

 the p'ospection, which must be somewhere, is not in the 

 animal, but in the Creator? 



In treating of the parental affection in brutes, our busi- 

 ness lies rather with the origin of the principle, than with 

 the effects and expressions of it. Writers recount these 

 with pleasure and admiration. The conduct of many kinds 

 of animals towards their young, has escaped no observer, 

 no historian of nature. " How will they caress them,'* 

 says Derham, "with their affectionate notes, lull and quiet 

 them with their tender parental voice ; put food into their 

 mouths ; cherish, and keep them warm ; teach them to 

 pick and eat, and gather food for themselves; and in a 

 word, perform the part of so many nurses, deputed by the 

 sovereign Lord and Preserver of the world, to help such 

 young and shiftless creatures?" Neither ought it, under 

 this head, to be forgotten, how much the instinct costs the 

 animal which feels it ; how much a bird, for example, gives 

 up, by sitting upon her nest ; how repugnant it is to her 

 organization, her habits, and her pleasures. An animal. 



