THE RELIGION OF NATURE 



the same events will always follow from the 

 same causes." 



" Animals are not guided in inferences by rea- 

 soning ; neither are children ; neither are the gen- 

 erality of mankind in their ordinary actions and 

 conclusions. . . . Nature must have provided 

 some other principle, of more ready and more 

 general use and application ; nor can an operation 

 of such immense consequence in life as that of 

 inferring effects from causes, be trusted to the 

 uncertain process of reasoning and argumenta- 

 tion." 



" But though animals learn many parts of their 

 knowledge from observation, there are also many 

 parts of it which they derive from the original 

 hand of nature, which much exceed the share of 

 capacity they possess on ordinary occasions, and 

 in which they improve little or nothing by the 

 longest practice and experience. These we de- 

 nominate instincts, and are so apt to admire, as 

 something very extraordinary and inexplicable by 

 all the disquisitions of human understanding." 



" But our wonder will perhaps cease or dimin- 

 ish when we consider that the experimental reason- 

 ing itself, which we possess in common with beasts 

 and on which the whole conduct of life depends, 

 is nothing but a species of instinct or mechanical 

 power that acts in us unknown to ourselves, and 

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