10 HABITS AND INSTINCTS OP ANIMALS. CHAP. I. 



it becomes impossible to mark their limits by the naked 

 facts they unfold. But this is merely looking to the 

 surface of things. Man, it is true, is guided by in- 

 stinct, more or less, in every stage of his existence, 

 from the moment when he turns to the maternal 

 breast *, to that at which he expires. The economy of 

 a state of probation renders it absolutely necessary that 

 he should be subject to the animal instincts and passions 

 of the brute creation; for, were it otherwise, there 

 would have been no occasion for his being peculiarly 

 gifted with a higher and a controlling power. This 

 power is REASON : and with this intent, in a primary 

 sense, has it been granted to us, and to us only. Rea- 

 son, in fact, is almost but another name for MIND, or 

 that principle which guides our volition, whether for the 

 better or the worse, in all such cases as come not within 

 the scope of animal instincts. Reason is superadded to 

 instinct, as a distinct faculty, and is not a mere expan- 

 sion of the same power. The history of the world, 

 unfortunately, exhibits too many instances of men 

 particularly among the ancients endowed with the 

 noblest development of this power, who, yet, have given 

 themselves up to the most gross and brutish sensuali- 

 ties ; thus exhibiting the animal propensities of the one 

 faculty in its most pitiable force, since it was accom- 

 panied by a total prostration of the other; one hour a 

 philosopher, the next a debauchee. 



(13.) The operations of reason, again, are very dif- 

 ferent from those of instinct ; it commences not, like 

 the latter, in early infancy, but is of slow growth. 

 There is nothing to contradict the hypothesis that 

 all the powers of instinct an animal will ever possess, 

 are given to it so soon as it quits the sustenance it 

 may derive from the parent, and begins to provide for 

 itself. It will be observed, that a kitten is just as wary 



* I have somewhere met with a passage gravely asserting that the in- 

 fant does not turn to the mother's breast instinctively lor food, but that 

 it is directed by her to that pure source of nourishment. Had the writer, 

 in his simplicity, put the question to any mother, a smile at its absurdity 

 would have been his answer 



