^ EMOTIONAL AND INSTINCTIVE ACTIONS. 193 



operations of this terminate in the formation of a Volition, the commands of 

 which are conveyed to the muscle, through a channel structurally distinct, as 

 cases of paralysis fully prove, from that which is the medium of Emotional 

 actions. It cannot be doubted by any person, who has attentively studied the 

 characters of the lower animals, that many of them possess psychical endow- 

 ments, corresponding with those which we term the intellectual powers and 

 moral feelings in Man ; but in proportion as these are undeveloped, in that 

 proportion is the animal under the dominion of those Instinctive impulses, 

 which, so far as its own consciousness is concerned, may be designated as 

 blind and aimless, but which are ordained by the Creator for its protection 

 front danger, and for the supply of its natural wants. The same may be said 

 of the Human infant, or of the Idiot, in whom the reasoning powers are unde- 

 veloped. Instinctive actions may in general be distinguished from those which 

 are the result of voluntary power guided by reason, chiefly by the two follow- 

 ing characters : Although, in many cases, experience is required to give the 

 Will command over the muscles concerned in its operations, no experience or 

 education is required, in order that the different actions, which result from an 

 Instinctive impulse, may follow one another with unerring precision. 2. These 

 actions are always performed 4)y the same species of animal, nearly, if not 

 exactly, in the same manner; presenting no such variation in the means 

 adapted to the object in view, and admitting of no such improvement in the 

 progress of life, or in the succession of ages, as we observe in the habits of 

 individual men, or in the manners and customs of nations, that are adapted to 

 the attainment of any particular ends, by those voluntary efforts which are 

 guided by reason. The fact, too, that these instinctive actions are often seen 

 to be performed under circumstances rendering them nugatory, as reason 

 informs us, for the ends which they are to accomplish (as when the Flesh-fly 

 deposits her egg on the Carrion-plant instead of a piece of meat, or when the 

 Hen sits on a pebble instead of her egg), is an additional proof, that the 

 Instinctive actions of animals are prompted, like the consensual movements we 

 have been recently inquiring into, by an impulse which immediately results 

 from a particular sensation being felt, and not by anticipation of the effect which 

 the action will produce. 



262. The correspondence between the purely Emotional actions in Man, 

 and those actions in the lower animals to which we give the name of Instinct- 

 ive, may be made evident by a very simple illustration. The Cuttlefish is 

 well known to discharge its ink, when pursued, and to tinge fhe water around 

 with a colour so deep, as to enable it to escape under the cloud thus formed. 

 Now it is not to be supposed that the Cuttle-fish has any notion of the purpose 

 which this act will serve ; since its constancy and uniformity, and the provi- 

 sion for its performance immediately on the emersion of the young animal from 

 the egg, forbid our regarding it as the result of any act of reasoning. Further, 

 the ink is an excretion which corresponds to the urine (having been found to 

 contain urea) ; and every one knows how strong an impulse to discharge this 

 is frequently caused by mental emotion. The same may be said of the 

 strongly odorous secretions possessed by many Mammalia, which are dis- 

 charged under similar circumstances, and evidently with the same object; 

 though of that object, the animal itself be not conscious. The emotion of fear 

 involuntarily opens the sphincters, and causes the contraction of the receptacle, 

 in one case as in the other: and the great difference between the condition of 

 Man, and that of the lower animals, in this respect, is simply that, in the 

 former, the purely Emotional or Instinctive actions are few in comparison with 

 the whole, whilst in the latter they constitute by far the largest part ; and also 

 that Man has much greater power of controlling these actions by an effort of 

 his Will, than that which the lower animals possess. Every one knows, how- 

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