536 INSTINCT OF INSECTS. 



portioned, and symmetrical structure : and he gravely tells us that the 

 boasted hexagonal cells of bees are produced by the reciprocal pressure of 

 the cylindrical bodies of these insects against each other ! ! 1 



Nor is it requisite to advert at length to the explanations of instinctive 

 actions more recently given by Steffens, a German author (one of the 

 transcendentalists, I conclude, from the incomprehensibility of his book to 

 my ordinary intellect), who says that the products of the vaunted instinct 

 of insects are nothing but "shootings out of inorganic animal masses'* 

 (anorgische anschusse) 2 ; and by Lamarck % who attributes them to certain 

 inherent inclinations arising from habits impressed upon the organs of the 

 animals concerned in producing them, by the constant efflux towards these 

 organs of the nervous fluid, which, during a series of ages, has been dis- 

 placed in their endeavours to perform certain actions which their neces- 

 sities have given birth to. The mere statement of a hypothesis of which 

 the enunciation is nearly unintelligible, and built upon the assumption of 

 the presence of an unseen fluid, and of the existence of the animal some 

 millions of years, is quite sufficient, and would even be unnecessary if it 

 were not of such late origin. Neither shall I detain you with any formal 

 consideration of the hypothesis advanced by Addison and some other authors, 

 that instinct is an immediate and constant impulse of the Deity ; which, to 

 omit other obvious objections, is sufficiently refuted by the fact, that ani- 

 mals in their instincts are sometimes at fault, and commit mistakes, which 

 on the above supposition could not in any case happen. 



The only doctrine on the subject of instinct requiring any thing like a 

 formal refutation is that which, contending for the identity of this faculty 

 with reason in man, maintains that all the actions of animals, however com- 

 plicated, are, like those of the human race, the result of observation, inven- 

 tion, and experience. This theory, maintained by the sceptics, Pythagoras, 

 Plato, and some other ancient philosophers, and in modern times by Hel- 

 vetius, Condillac, and Smellie, has been by none more ingeniously supported 

 than by Dr. Darwin, who, in the chapter treating on instinct, in the first 

 volume of his Zoonomia, has brought forward a collection of facts which give 

 it a great air of plausibility. This plausibility, however, is merely superficial ; 

 and the result of a rigorous examination by any competent judge is, that 

 the greater part of Dr. Darwin's facts bear more strongly in favour of the 

 dissimilarity of instinct and reason than of their identity: and that those 

 few which seem to support the latter position are built upon the relations 

 of persons ignorant of natural history, who have confused together dis- 

 tinct species of animals. Thus, because some anonymous informant told 

 him that hive-bees when transported to Barbadoes, where there is no 

 winter, ceased to lay up a store of honey, Dr. Darwin infers that all the ope- 

 rations of these insects are guided by reason and the adaptation of means 

 to an end a very just inference, if the statement from which it is drawn 



i Hist. Nat. Edit. 1785, v. 277. 



Seitrage zur innern Naturgeschichte der Erde, 1801, p. 298. 



5 In his Philosophic Zoologique, Paris, 1809 (ii. 325.) a work which every 

 zoologist will, I think, join with me in regretting should be devoted to metaphysical 

 disquisitions built on the most gratuitous assumptions, instead of comprising that 

 luminous generalisation of facts relative to the animal world which is so great a 

 desideratum, and for performing which satisfactorily this eminent naturalist is so 

 well qualified. 



