NATL'RAL HISTORY OF CREATION. 253 



of acquisitiveness — the faculty wliich with us makes ricli 

 men and misers. A vast number of curious devices, by 

 which insects provide for the protection and subsistence 

 of their young, whom they are perhaps never to see, are 

 most probably a peculiar restricted effort of philopro- 

 genitiveness. The common source of this class of acts, 

 and of common mental operations, is shown very con- 

 vincingly by the melting of the one set into the other. 

 Thus, for example, the bee and bird will make moditica- 

 tions in the ordinary form of their cells and nests when 

 necessity compels them. Thus,, tho alimentiveness of 

 such animals as the dog, usually definite with regard to 

 quantity and quality, can be pampered or educated up to 

 a kind of epicurism, that is, an indefiniteness of object 

 and action. The same faculty acts limitedly in ourselves 

 at first, dictating the special act of sucking ; afterwards 

 it acquires indefiniteness. Such is the real nature of the 

 distinction between what are called instincts and reason, 

 upon which so many volumes have been written without 

 profit to the world. All faculties are instinctive, that is, 

 dependent on internal and inherent impulses. This 

 term is therefore not specially applicable to either of the 

 recognised modes of the operation of the faculties. We 

 only, in the one case, see the faculty in an immature 

 and slightly dev^eloped state; in the other, in its most 

 advanced condition. In the one case it is definite, in the 

 other indefinite, in its range of action. These terms 

 would perhaps be the most suitable for expressing the 

 distinction. 



In the humblest forms of being we can trace scarcely 

 anything besides a definite action in a few of the facul- 

 ties. Generally speaking, as we ascend in the scale, we 

 see more and more of the faculties in exercise, and these 



