INSTINCT. 293 



mon instance of a brood of young ducks brought up 

 under a hen, and, contrary to all the instincts and 

 feelings of the foster-mother, plunging- suddenly into 

 the water ; while she herself trembles piteously on 

 the brink of the pond, not daring to pursue them, 

 and expecting every moment to see them drowned. 

 By what kind of experience or observation, by what 

 train of thought or reasoning, has the scarcely- 

 fledged brood been able to discern that a web-foot 

 fits them for swimming, arid that a fissured foot 

 would render them incapable? a knowledge that 

 mankind have only acquired by long and repeated 

 contemplation, and which has never been fully ex- 

 plained to this hour. Habit, imitation, and instruc- 

 tion, would all concur in teaching them to flee/ from 

 the water, as a source of inevitable destruction ; and 

 yet, in opposition to all these influences and premo- 

 nitions, we see them obeying an irresistible impulse, 

 which directs them to what is fitting, stamped in the 

 interior of their little frames, and which is equally 

 remote from the laws of mind and of mechanism*." 



II. Directly opposed to the writers who seem in- 

 clined to make little or no distinction between reason 

 and instinct, are those who, with Des Cartes, Car- 

 dinal Polignac, Buffon, Winckler, Steffens, Robinet, 

 Lamarck, and the more modern authors of the La- 

 marckian school, maintain, some more distinctly than 

 others, that animals are mere machines, acting in 

 consequence of the effects of necessary external 

 causes. 



Winckler, in illustration of his doctrine, alleges 

 that the brain of a bee or a spider is impressed at 

 birth with certain geometrical figures, according to 

 which models its works are constructed f- No doubt 

 the form of a bird's nest would be maintained, on 

 the same principle, to originate in a hemisphere 



* Book of Nature, ii. 119, f Kirby and Spence, ii. 466. 



