38 NATURAL HISTORY OF THE DOG. 



will be sufficient if 1 attempt to analyse the property of instinct : 

 in doing which, if 1 should be enabled to prove that innumerable 

 actions performed by dogs are not at all referrible to this quality, 

 I shall have compassed my object ; for if such actions are not m- 

 stinctive, they must be rational. 



Instinct may be defined to be, that property in animals by 

 which such actions are performed as immediately tend to the pre- 

 servation of themselves and the propagation of their species. It 

 is a principle that may be considered as inherent in the organiza- 

 tion of an animal body, by which, without instruction, deliberation, 

 or experience, it is urged to do whatever is immediately necessary 

 for its self-preservation and the continuance of the species. It 

 develops itself (contrary to reason) in full perfection as soon as it 

 is wanted. The young chick pecks its own release from the 

 shell, and when disencumbered therefrom, it begins to gather 

 up its food, judiciously selecting it from extraneous matter. The 

 indigent and blind puppy, immediately on its entry into the 

 world, searches out the mammillary processes that yield its nutri- 

 ment, and adapts the surfaces of its little mouth to exhaust the 

 gland, with more dexterity than the most acute philosopher aided 

 by every mechanical principle could do. The operations of in- 

 stinct being directed to the preservation of existence and the 

 continuance of the species, it was necessarily given perfect^ or 

 these ends would not have been answered ; but as its operations 

 seem confined wholly to these great ends, so it is very limited in 

 its scale of action, and admits of little, if any, improvement. In 

 domestic as well as in unreclaimed animals, such actions as are 

 directed to the essential laws of fresei^vatio^i and propagation 

 remain always alike : the same general aptitudes, the same 

 dexterity in catering for their food, excluding their enemies, and 

 fostering their young, were as apparent two thousand years ago as 

 at the present day. The instinctive principle, as a purely pre- 

 servative one, was originally given to them perfect ; it therefore 

 required no extension, and it has received none. 



If this definition of instinct should be considered correct 



