INTRODUCTION. 



and because we look merely at the result, and disre- 

 gard the connexion, the knowledge which our ob- 

 servation gives us, however accurate it may be, stands 

 alone, and produces nothing: it is a chip, and not a 

 germ ; and therefore it will not vegetate. 



In a former volume we mentioned that one promi- 

 nent cause of error and failure in the study of nature, 

 has been an overweening tendency to have recourse to 

 man, and his modes of acting, for analogies whereby 

 to explain the operations of nature ; and here we may 

 just hint at one fatal instance of it. What is called 

 the instinct of animals, has proved a stumbling-block 

 to all, or almost all, who have written about it. The 

 shades of opinion are various ; but the extremes may 

 be stated as mere mechanism for those who have rated 

 the animal powers the lowest, and mind or reason, the 

 same in kind with that of man, for those who have 

 rated them the highest. And these misconceptions 

 (for they seem all to* be misconceptions) are, unfortu- 

 nately, not mere verbal blunders ; their tendency is to 

 measure the Almighty by the standard of man, and to 

 sink man to the level of the beasts that perish; 

 thereby reducing nature to a collection of loose and 

 disjointed fragments, and man's hope of immortality 

 to a mere faith, for which he not only can give no 

 reason, but against which the subjects that most na- 

 turally and powerfully call forth his thoughts, are 

 always suggesting objections. 



In the mineral and vegetable kingdoms there are 

 not the same facilities for error, though there have 

 been implied hints that there is a sort of shadowy 



