INSTINCT AND INTELLIGENCE. 67 



ness of its finality are so intimately connected that 

 the one necessarily presupposes the other. But this 

 is the fundamental tenet of materialism and destroys 

 the true nature of an intelligent act. Consciousness of 

 piirpose is impossible without spiritual cognition. They 

 are identical, and therefore our definition adds that an 

 intelligent act is guided by a purely spiritual faculty 

 of cognition and appetite. The whole question de- 

 pends on the proof of this last inference. 



Let us open the argument with an illustration. 

 We select that of the babe in the cradle. Its reason- 

 ing faculty is still dormant. It is hungry and cries. 

 Its mother puts a milk bottle into its hands. For a 

 moment its desires are appeased. But soon the same 

 scene has to be repeated, until finally the child finds 

 the bottle of itself, when it feels the pangs of hunger. 

 No one will dare to affirm that it has attained the use 

 of reason, and yet no one can deny, that in conse- 

 quence of repeated experience in some way or other 

 the feeling of hunger and the milk-bottle are connect- 

 ed in the child's perception. Otherwise it is impossi- 

 ble to explain why the child constantly grasps the bot- 

 tle when it is hungry. But who will maintain that 

 the babe acts with consciousness of the finality of its 

 action? 



Here is another example. When Rhynchites be- 

 tulse feels the natural impulse to lay eggs, it in- 

 variably prepares a funnel-shaped depository and 

 lays its eggs in the folds of this artistic bed. It evi- 

 dently perceives in some way a connection between 

 the funnel and its impulse to lay eggs. Otherwise 

 this beetle would neither prepare the funnel nor al- 



