306 FACULTIES OF BIRDS. 



added invention ; but all is wisely disposed before- 

 hand for an act which is necessary, perfect, and na- 

 tural. A child, or a dull peasant who instructs him- 

 self, and studies by the aid of experience, though 

 acting- ill at first, afterwards improves. The insect 

 needs none of these imperfect essays : Supreme Wis- 

 dom has rendered it unnecessary. 



" Reason, on the contrary, receiving impressions 

 and images from without, or by the external senses, 

 transforms them into ideas in the brain, compares and 

 coolly judges of them ; arranges its actions by them ; 

 determines voluntarily in consequence, by what ap- 

 pears true, or just, or best, according to occurrences, 

 climates, &c. This is the peculiar faculty of reason- 

 ing man ; he acts by his free will in several ways. 



" Instinct never acts more completely than among 

 those animals which are the least endowed with 

 acquired knowledge. It is clear that those little 

 creatures, such as insects, each of which scarcely 

 lives more than a few weeks in the world, could not 

 have time or means to acquire, like a child, any 

 information by education or habit to accomplish the 

 destinies which nature has designed them. We must 

 therefore attribute to them a mind ready formed and 

 enlightened, and even incapable of acting otherwise. 

 But man and the larger species of animals, who exist 

 longer, and who possess organs and senses more de- 

 veloped, a remarkable brain, and therefore functions 

 less limited, and which can vary their actions accord- 

 ing to circumstances, must participate more or less of 

 liberty, of acquired knowledge, and of understanding. 

 Instinct becomes secondary with the latter, in pro- 

 portion as the intellectual functions are greater and 

 able to replace it. Therefore man, when endowed 

 with reason so highly cultivated as to become some- 

 times sublime, is almost totally devoid of instinct, 

 particularly in a state of civilization ; his taste and 



