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CHAPTER. XIV, 

 INSTINCT. 



BY far the greater number of the details both in this 

 and the two preceding* volumes, on the Architecture 

 and the Domestic Habits of Birds, are referable to 

 what is very commonly, both in popular arid scientific 

 language, termed instinct; a term, however, whose 

 precise signification has never been settled. The 

 most usual meaning of the word is the converse of 

 that of reason ; for while reason is understood to be a 

 faculty by which animal movements are directed in 

 consequence of some inferred effect being anticipated, 

 instinct is supposed to direct blindly without any 

 process of inference, or of anticipation derived from 

 experience. A hungry infant, for instance, will suck 

 with eagerness the breast of its mother, not in con- 

 sequence of inferring that milk will nourish it, but 

 blindly from the faculty termed instinct. On the 

 same principle, a hungry man will eat eagerly without 

 ever thinking about the nourishing qualities of the 

 food ; but it' he be told that the food is poisoned, he 

 immediately acts upon inference, and reason steps in 

 to correct the instinct which might lead him to de- 

 struction, though the fear of death that influences his 

 inference is equally instinctive with the instinct that 

 impels him to eat when he is hungry. These fami- 

 liar illustrations will enable the reader to form some 

 notion of the distinctions commonly made between 

 reason and instinct, and give him a key to many of 

 the opinions that have been promulgated oil this 

 difficult subject by philosophers of eminence. To 

 some of these we shall now briefly advert, beginning 



