INTROD.] THE SOUL. INSTINCT. 27 



of it ; and, on the other hand, a large proportion of the bodily acts 

 are independent of the mind. The immortal soul of man, divina 

 particula aura, is the seat of those thoughts and reasonings, hopes 

 and fears, joys and sorrows, which, whether as springs of action 

 or motions excited by passing events, must ever accompany him 

 through the chequered scene in which he is destined to play his 

 part during his earthly career. 



Although the animals, inferior to man, exhibit many mental acts 

 in common with him, they are devoid of all power of abstract rea- 

 soning. " Why is it," says Dr. Alison, " that the monkeys, who have 

 been observed to assemble about the fires which savages have made 

 in the forests, and been gratified by the warmth, have never been 

 seen to gather sticks and rekindle them when expiring ? Not, cer- 

 tainly, because they are incapable of understanding that the fire 

 which warmed them formerly will do so again, but because they 

 are incapable of abstracting and reflecting on that quality of wood, 

 and that relation of wood to fires already existing, which must be 

 comprehended, in order that the action of renewing the fire may be 

 suggested by what is properly called an effort of reason." 



Yet animals are guided by Instinct to the performance of cer- 

 tain acts which have reference to a determinate end : they con- 

 struct various mechanical contrivances, and adopt measures of pru- 

 dent foresight to provide for a season of want and difficulty. None 

 of these -acts could be effected by man without antecedent reasoning, 

 experience, or instruction. But animals do them without previous 

 assistance ; and the young and inexperienced are as expert as those 

 which have frequently repeated them. " An animal separated im- 

 mediately after its birth from all communication with its kind, will 

 yet perform every act peculiar to its species in the same manner, 

 and with the same precision, as if it had regularly copied their 

 example, and been instructed by their society. The animal is 

 guided and governed by this principle alone, by this all its powers 

 are limited, and to this all its actions are to be ultimately referred. 

 An animal can discover nothing new ; it can lose nothing old. The 

 beaver constructs its habitation, the sparrow its nest, the bee its 

 comb, neither better nor worse than they did five thousand years 

 ago." 



In plants there is no nervous system ; there are no mental phe- 

 nomena. The motions of plants correspond in some degree with 

 those movements of animals in which neither consciousness nor ner- 

 vous influence participate. Such movements are strictly organic, 

 and result from physical changes produced directly iii the part 



