V THE MENTAL PHENOMENA OF ANIMALS 129 



instead of as the mere symbol which it really 

 is ; and that reasoning, or logic, which deals with 

 nothing but propositions, is supposed to be neces- 

 sary in order to validate the natural fact symbol- 

 ised by those propositions. It is a fallacy similar 

 to that of supposing that money is the foundation 

 of wealth, whereas it is only the wholly unessen- 

 tial symbol of property. 



In the passage which immediately follows that 

 just quoted, Hume makes admissions which might 

 be turned to serious account against some of his 

 own doctrines. 



"But though animals learn many parts of their knowledge 

 from observation, there are also many parts of it which they 

 derive from the original hand of Nature, which much exceed 

 the share of capacity they possess on ordinary occasions, and in 

 which they improve, little or nothing, by the longest practice 

 and experience. These we denominate INSTINCTS, and are so 

 apt to admire as something very extraordinary and inexplicable 

 by all the disquisitions of human understanding. But our 

 wonder will perhaps cease or diminish when we consider that the 

 experimental reasoning itself, which we possess in common with 

 beasts, and on which the whole conduct of life depends, is 

 nothing but a species of instinct or mechanical power, that acts 

 in us unknown to ourselves, and in its chief operations is not 

 directed by any such relations or comparison of ideas as are the 

 proper objects of our intellectual faculties. 



"Though the instinct be different, yet still it is an instinct 

 which teaches a man to avoid the fire, as much as that which 

 teaches a bird, with such exactness, the art of incubation 

 and the whole economy and order of its nursery." (IV. pp. 

 125, 126.) 



The parallel here drawn between the "avoid- 

 ance of a fire " by a man and the incubatory 



VOL. VI K 



