I 



INSTINCT REASON. 291 



How knows he this? — Who could him teach, 



None hut himself hath -power of speech? 



What! does he think the various sounds 



With which our feather'd world abounds 



Contain no meaning ? — This, his sense ! 



His views oi our intelligence ! 



He too denies that we have reason! 



If it would not be out of season, 



I'd prove, as easily I can, 



That we have that as well as man. 



we were belter acquainted with the opeiatiouh of the minds of 

 brutes, it is extremely probable tliiit much of wiiat now seems, 

 and is called instinct, would be found the result of processes of 

 reasoning; simple, no doubt, many of them are, but rational 

 notwithstanding. 



Mr. Bolton, the author of Harmonia Ruralis, informs us 

 that he observed a pair of goldfinches beginning to make their 

 nest in his garden, and that they formed tiieir ground-work 

 with mossj grass^ Sec. as usual j but, on his scattering small 

 pieces of wool about the garden, they, in a great measure, left 

 their own materials and used the wool ; he afterwards gave 

 them cotton, wiiich they took, resigning the wool ; he lastly 

 gave them doun, with which they finished their work, having 

 forsaken all the other articles. Is not this reason'/ But it 

 would be endless to multiply instance's in which the actions of 

 birds, and other aniiLals, are evidently regulated by reason. 



And here I cannot avoid lanienting that PoPt's Essay on 

 Man has had, on this account, as well as on some others, so ex_ 

 tensive a circulation ; it has, I fear, by the method in which it 

 lias treated the subjects of Morals and Mind, considerably 

 obstructed our progress in knowledge: for it is, it appears to 

 me, by far too dictatorial and dogmatic, assuming as true wlia^ 

 must still, I think, be considered as subjudice. And although we 



