FALLIBILITY. 



CHAPTER XXXI. 



LIABILITY TO ERROR. 



ONE of the commonest popular attributes of that comprehen- 

 sive faculty in the lower animals, which, when contrasted 

 with human reason, is generally described as instinct ; that 

 quality of instinct, which is perpetually brought into greatest 

 and admiring prominence by writers, especially of the theo- 

 logical or pietistic class, on the marvels of the animal eco- 

 nomy, is the unerringness, infallibility, perfection of instinct. 

 But it is a fact utterly fatal to such a view of the infallibility 

 of animal instinct that the lower animals make mistakes ; 

 they exhibit errors both of omission and commission, of the 

 same kind, under the same sort of circumstances, as nume- 

 rous and varied in their character, as man himself does, or 

 as those of man are that is to say, they are such as 

 man commits, or would commit, under similar circumstances. 

 So infinite indeed, both in number and variety, are the 

 proofs of the fallibility of what is absurdly, restrictively called 

 instinct in the lower animals, that it is impossible, in the 

 present work, to do much more than merely catalogue and 

 comment upon a few illustrations. 



Among errors may perhaps be regarded the non- 

 variation of instinct with circumstances, the want of 

 adaptability to external or surrounding conditions, that 

 characterises certain animals, such as beavers and monkeys 

 in artificial confinement. 



