MEDULLA OBLOXGATA. 445 



there are many purely instinctive actions in man, as well as in 

 animals. It is no less true that in the higher animals there is often 

 thg same exercise of reasoning power as in man. The degree of 

 this power is much less in them than in him, but its nature is the 

 same. Whenever, in an animal, we see any action performed with 

 the evident intention of accomplishing a particular object, to which 

 it is properly adapted, such an act is plainly the result of reason- 

 ing powers, not essentially different from our own. The establish- 

 ment of sentinels by gregarious animals, to warn the herd of the 

 approach of danger, the recollection of punishment inflicted for a 

 particular action, and the subsequent avoidance or concealment of 

 that action, the teachability of many animals, and their capacity of 

 forming new habits or of improving the old ones, are all instances 

 of the same kind of intellectual power, and are quite different from 

 instinct, strictly speaking. It is this faculty which especially pre- 

 dominates over the others in the higher classes of animals, and 

 which finally attains its maximum of development in the human 

 species. 



