156 ANIMAL INSTINCTS. 



such as the building of nests or other preparation for 

 future progeny ; acts often very complex in kind, 

 distinct and uniform for the species, but in nowise 

 explicable as a provision of reason. The sexual in- 

 stincts, and those connected with food appetencies 

 essential to life on the earth come under the same 

 head, as acts not due to intelligence nor to any obvious 

 structure. Look, again, to the beehive or the ant-hiil, 

 where the instincts regard the individual creature far 

 less than the community where such communities are 

 made up of members differing in structure and func- 

 tions, yet all inter-related by mutual necessities and 

 where the instinctive energy is chiefly manifested in 

 making provision for the future. 



These instances, a few out of many, suffice to show 

 that there are classes and kinds of instincts which 

 cannot be interpreted through bodily organisation, 

 either original or induced by the habits and conditions 

 of existence. Much, indeed, may be admitted as to 

 the latter causes, especially where the higher degrees 

 of intelligence become interwoven with the complex 

 fabric of life. But there still remains the profound 

 problem of a power acting in and through this fabric 

 of which neither our senses nor reason can render any 

 account. It is the same mystery as that of the genera- 

 tion of life from life ; the same, indeed, in a sense 

 beyond mere analogy, since the insoluble questions are 

 alike in each case, and so clearly blended that they can 

 scarcely even be stated apart. If our knowledge ever 

 advances further into these mysteries (including the 

 strictly collateral one of the origin of species), it must 



