230 LESSONS FROM NATUEE. [CHAP. VII. 



may most undoubtedly possess faculties of different kinds (as 

 we possess the power of thought, and also the power of 

 pressing down by our weight any object on which we stand), 

 and these different faculties may manifest themselves at dif 

 ferent time?, some remaining for a season in a latent condi 

 tion. The fact of our not perceiving at first in the infant the 

 latent higher powers, may be merely due to the imperfection 

 of our powers of observation, like our inability to distinguish, 

 at a certain stage, the embryos of two widely different animals, 

 which inability no one thinks of advancing as an argument 

 in favour of their identity in the face of the divergence 

 which subsequent development makes manifest. 



This hypothesis of latency accounts for the facts, since it 

 allows the recognition of a difference in kind between the 

 deliberate and the indeliberate faculties. Two faculties are 

 distinct in kind, it we may possess the one in perfection with 

 out thereby implying that we possess the other; and still 

 more so if the two faculties tend to increase in an inverse 

 ratio, the perfection of the one being accompanied by a 

 degradation of the other. Yet this is just the distinction 

 between the instinctive and the intellectual parts of man s 

 nature. His instinctive actions are, as all admit, not rational 

 ones; his rational actions are not instinctive. Even more 

 than this, we may say the more instinctive are a man s actions 

 the less are they rational, and vice versa ; and this amounts 

 to a demonstration that reason has not, and by no possibility 

 could have been, developed from instinct. In man we have 

 this inverse ratio between sensation and perception, and in 

 brutes it is just there where the absence of reason is most 

 generally admitted (e.g., in insects) that we have the very 

 summit and perfection of instinct made known to us by the 

 ant and the bee. That instinct and reason then are so distinct, 

 is made manifest by the inverse relation existing between the 

 two. The intensification of sensation diminishes the power 

 of intellectual action, while intense intellectual pre-occupation 

 deadens the sensitive faculties. Sir William Hamilton long 

 ago called attention to this inverse relation ; but when two 



