IV 



ON INSTINCT IN MAN AND ANIMALS 



THE most perfect and most striking examples of what is 

 termed instinct those in which reason or observation appear 

 to have the least influence, and which seem to imply the 

 possession of faculties farthest removed from our own are to 

 be found among insects. The marvellous constructive powers 

 of bees and wasps, the social economy of ants, the careful 

 provision for the safety of a progeny they are never to see 

 manifested by many beetles and flies, and the curious pre- 

 parations for the pupa state by the larvae of butterflies and 

 moths, are typical examples of this faculty, and are supposed 

 to be conclusive as to the existence of some power or intelli- 

 gence very different from that which we derive from our 

 senses or from our reason. 



How Instinct may be best Studied 



Whatever we may define instinct to be, it is evidently some 

 form of mental manifestation, and as we can only judge of mind 

 by the analogy of our own mental functions and by observa- 

 tion of the results of mental action in other men and in 

 animals, it is incumbent on us, first, to study and endeavour 

 to comprehend the minds of infants, of savage men, and of 

 animals not very far removed from ourselves, before we 

 pronounce positively as to the nature of the mental operations 

 in creatures so radically different from us as insects. We have 

 not yet even been able to ascertain what are the senses they 

 possess, or what relation their powers of seeing, hearing, and 

 feeling have to ours. Their sight may far exceed ours both 

 in delicacy and in range, and may possibly give them know 



