236 ANIMAL FORCES. [ii. 



erroneously, that the apparent voluntariness of these acts 

 depended on sensational conceptions, even although they might 

 be only external sensations. That which is termed voluntary 

 motion, we term so only in ourselves ; the voluntariness is not 

 in the movements — which remain the same whether sensational 

 conceptions produce them or not — but simply in this, that we 

 produce them by spontaneous sensational conceptions. But 

 who has proved that animals thus produce their movements ? 

 or who can demonstrate, in the face of ocular proof to the 

 contrary, that these movements can be effected by no other 

 animal force than conceptions (400) ? That these animals act in 

 this way according to the preordained objects of nature, especially 

 in the instincts, is undeniable (262) ; but of these objects even 

 the greater number of thinking animals themselves know nothing 

 (265). They are the objects of nature, not theirs (266); and 

 nature has so provided when their adapted acts should take 

 place, or their instincts ought to be in operation, that certain 

 external impressions are imparted in a naturally necessary 

 manner, which pass along their nerves, and are so reflected 

 and changed into internal impressions (399), that the animal 

 must perform those apparently adapted and volitional movements; 

 and which are intended also for the gratification of an instinct, 

 if it exist, but which are nevertheless just as fully eflPected 

 without it (269). Thus it is from erroneous views that our 

 astonishment arises, inasmuch as we think that these acts 

 cannot be developed by any other animal force than the con- 

 ceptive force of the mind. For the same reason we erroneously 

 infer, that because the acts of bees, ants, flies, polypes, and other 

 insects and worms, are regulated to ends and in agreement with 

 preordination of nature, they are dependent upon the conceptive 

 force (266). It is quite possible, however, that the external im- 

 pressions manifestly provided by nature for the instincts in a 

 preordained manner, and which excite the organs according to 

 a pre-established order of sequence, cause in them all those 

 wonderful and apparently voluntary acts, without a conception 

 being at all necessary thereto (286, 292, 293). 



440. We know as little how and wherein external impressions 

 on the nerves diff'er from each other as we know with regard to 

 the various external sensations which they excite (413). An ex- 

 ternal impression produces as nerve -actions the same movements 



