2 HABITS AND INSTINCTS OF ANIMALS. CHAP. I. 



experience, and without a knowledge of the end in 

 view, they are impelled to the performance of certain 

 actions, tending to the well-being of the individual, and 

 the preservation of the species." So far, then, and 

 considered as merely a general definition, or rather 

 description, of instinct, this opinion is perfectly satis- 

 factory , but it does not reach all the various bearings 

 of this complicated subject. When we find some animals 

 not only impelled to perform certain necessary func- 

 tions in a regular and unvarying manner, one gene- 

 ration following another in exactly the same track, and 

 supplying their different wants in precisely the same 

 manner, but also that many others actually vary in 

 what should seem to be the universal ordination of 

 nature, and, as if in obedience to the deductions of 

 reason, accurately adapting their plans to their circum- 

 stances, and their measures to those unexpected changes 

 which accident may have wrought in their situation, 

 with these facts upon record, we feel it is not sur- 

 prising that some who have written on the subject have 

 gone a step further. They have, in fact, sought to solve 

 the question, by admitting that, besides the faculty of 

 instinct, animals may, in an inferior degree, also possess 

 that of reason. But this admission brings with it fresh 

 difficulties. If once $e allow the least degree of reason 

 to the brute creation, we must concede a portion of it 

 altogether incompatible with their situation. We must 

 admit that the bee, for instance, is guided in her 

 wonderful operations, by an acquaintance with those 

 principles of science, which man has required time and 

 reflection to discover. We must, in short, acknow- 

 ledge her both a geometrician and a philosopher ; and 

 endue her with a perception of causes and effects, in- 

 consistent with the other habits and appearances of the 

 creature, absolutely derogatory to the superior nature of 

 man. 



(2.) A much more probable solution of this question, 

 and one far more conformable to the relative positions 

 of man and brute, is afforded by the idea, (( that animals 



