28 Instinct and Reason. [Jan., 



presumption of a personality of existence, and of the substantive 

 essence of material things. Intellection then, whether under its 

 most coarctative restrictions, or in its most expansive amplitudes, 

 can be regarded as none other than a homogeneous entity. To 

 this principle we apply the name sovl, the concrete, of which 

 7nind is the alter et idem, the abstract exponent. 



What is instinct, what is reason as contradistinguished from in- 

 stinct, and whether the latter is the sequential and progressionary 

 expansion of the first, or an original and fundamental element, are 

 among the " vexed questions " that have again and again tasked 

 the acumen of metaphysicians. 



These inquiries, recondite as they are in their nature and intri- 

 cate in their bearings, have furthermore had to contend with ap- 

 prehensions from without, "lions in the way," mistaken views of 

 the moral proclivities towards which such speculations are sup- 

 posed to tend. As a make-weight against the apparent duality 

 of constitution as characteristic of quadrupeds, a tripartite com- 

 bination has been devised for man, by the intervention of a ter- 

 Hum quid, a something to which the term spirit is appropriated. 

 The distinction is a distinction without a difference. 



I shall define the terms instinct and reason, (for the lexicogra- 

 phy of science is yet to be written,) in accordance with recognized 

 usage, and apply the same, less out of respect to the accident of 

 birth-place, than in reference to their inherent relations. 



Reason, the abstract expression of the art of ratiocination, is 

 the process of educing a resultant idea from the catenation of two 

 or more corelated simple ideas, and in adaptation to variable con- 

 ditions. Judgment is reason in its elementary form. The opera- 

 tion involves sensation, abstraction, memory, and comparison. 



Instinct is native reason in embryo, mature at birth, but cir- 

 cumscribed within specific ranges. " Instinct (Broussais,) arises 

 always from sensations which solicit the human being to execute 

 involuntarily and often unconsciously certain acts necessary to its 

 welfare." Thus instinct is seen to be antecedent to experience, 

 a blind automatic impulsion after the means, while the end is un- 

 foreseen; reason regards the end through experience of the means. 

 Instinct like the aesthetic faculties, is perfect in its nascent state 

 and unsusceptible of cultivation; reason like the locomotive ma- 

 chinery, works at first with a fitfulness of irregularity, for which 

 time and exercise provide corrections. Instinct is the axiomatic 

 and postulative; reason the problematical and deductive. Instinct 

 " spiritus intus, the Divinity that shapes the ends" — speaks with 

 the authority of infallible premonition; reason falls back upon its 

 own constitutional sagacity, and modifies its action in accommo- 

 dation to contingent conditions. The one moves along a uniform 

 line; the other is ever diverging into devious lines. They are 



