Phenomena of Instinct. 163 



so much alike as to go on in the same manner under the 

 same circumstances without any real connexion between 

 them. But a more simple view, as it seems to me, is to 

 suppose that this real connexion is not wanting that 

 there is, as it were, an all-encompassing atmosphere of 

 life which is as common to all living creatures as the 

 atmosphere they breathe. And this view is in perfect 

 keeping with all that has been said respecting life so 

 far. For what does this amount to ? It is that vital 

 motion is a mode of physical motion a motion of 

 which the source and spring is, within the individual 

 certainly, but also beyond it a motion of which the 

 sphere is co-extensive with that of nature herself. It is 

 that there are fluctuations in life which strictly corre- 

 spond with day and night, with summer and winter, 

 and which, on this account, must be referred to 

 astronomical causes. It is that there is an intimate con- 

 nexion between vital force and physical force which 

 may be like that which exists between the different 

 modes of physical force, a connexion, it may be, 

 amounting even to correlation. The point arrived at 

 before beginning to speak of instinct, indeed, is one in 

 which, as a matter of course, the search for the key to 

 instinct would have to be made, not in any one living 

 creature singly, but in nature generally. It would be, 

 indeed, as reasonable to go back to the old notion and 

 suppose that the heavenly bodies move because they 

 are actuated by a life of their own as to continue to 

 believe that the life of one of the lower animals, in any 

 of its manifold aspects, is located within the animal 

 exclusively. It would seem as if the key to this life 

 were only to be found in the full recognition of unity in 

 multiety and multiety in unity as an actual fact. And 

 if so, then it is no more wonderful that the instinctive 



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