35 

 best we may, the operations of that Power, which 



" Changed in all, and yet in all Ihe same, 



Lives through all life, extends through all extent, 

 Spreads undivided, operates unsponl." 



POPtf. 



Though the word "Instinct" be familiar to men's ears as 

 "household gods," there is, it would appear, no unity of 

 opinion as to what is to be understood by it. For while 

 some would oppose instinct to reason, and others would 

 have it something beyond reason, all agree, by the very 

 invention and employment of the word, to make instinct and 

 reason different. To my notion instinct is reason ; but it is rea^ 

 son acting from without. Is it explaining any thing, to use 

 the language of a French philosopher respecting bees, and 

 say that they fulfil their destiny ** par un sentiment 

 aveugle." What, in the name of French philosophy, is 

 un sentiment aveugle'l A blind sentiment is a contradic- 

 tion in terms : define sentiment, which cannot be organic, 

 as you will, some element of mind will adhere to it. Sen- 

 timent is the result of a conception, and what conceives 

 but the mind? wherever we see what is called Instinct 

 displayed, God forbid that we should doubt the hand of 

 God to be at work! but is it necessary to suppose that 

 wisdom to be concrete, as it were, and resident in the insect 

 that displays it. If it is his own knowledge that a bee dis- 

 plays in what you call his instinctive actions ; if it is his ou-n 

 mind that he exercises in the construction of his cell, or 

 the economy of the hive, I contend that you allow more 

 knowledge than man himself can muster, for that particu- 

 lar task, to a bee ! A profound problem is proposed to the 

 society of the hive for the first lime, and understood at once 

 by all I But this is only the intellectual part : now comes the 

 , practical. The school of mathematicians has become a colony 

 of architects, of whom each not only performs his own share 

 of the task previously concerted together, but also works 



