THE BELFAST ADDRESS. 185 



we find the tactual range and delicacy greatly aug<- 

 mented, new avenues of knowledge being thus opened 

 to the animal. Man crowns the edifice here, not only 

 in virtue of his own manipulatory power, but through 

 the enormous extension of his range of experience, by 

 the invention of instruments of precision, which serve 

 as supplemental senses and supplemental limbs. The 

 reciprocal action of these is finely described and illus- 

 trated. That chastened intellectual emotion to which 

 I have referred in connection with Mr. Darwin, is not 

 absent in Mr. Spencer. His illustrations possess at 

 times exceeding vividness and force; and from his 

 style on such occasions it is to be inferred, that the 

 ganglia of this Apostle of the Understanding are some- 

 times the seat of a nascent poetic thrill. 



It is a fact of supreme importance that actions, the 

 performance of which at first requires even painful 

 effort and deliberation, may, by habit, be rendered auto- 

 matic. Witness the slow learning of its letters by a 

 child, and the subsequent facility of reading in a man, 

 when each group of letters which forms a word is in- 

 stantly, and without effort, fused to a single perception. 

 Instance the billiard-player, whose muscles of hand and 

 eye, when he reaches the perfection of his art, are un- 

 consciously co-ordinated. Instance the musician, who, 

 by practice, is enabled 'to fuse a multitude of arrange- 

 ments, auditory, tactual, and muscular, into a process 

 of automatic manipulation. Combining such facts 

 with the doctrine of hereditary transmission, we reach 

 a theory of Instinct. A chick, after coming out of the 

 egg, balances itself correctly, runs about, picks up food, 

 thus showing that it possesses a power of directing its 

 movements to definite ends. How did the chick learn 

 this very complex co-ordination of eyes, muscles, and 

 beak? It has not been individually taught; its personal 



