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the brain of a child new born to a blank tablet, on which are to be figured 

 all the future acts of his intelligence. If sensation came only from with- 

 out, if the external senses were the only organs that could send impres- 

 sions to the cerebral centre, the understanding, at the moment of birth, 

 had indeed been nothing, and the comparison of its organ to a sheet of 

 white paper, or to a slab of Parian marble, on which not a character were 

 drawn, had been perfectly correct. But we are compelled to acknow- 

 ledge with Cabanis, two sources of ideas quite distinct from each other, 

 the external senses, and the internal organs. These inward sensations, 

 springing from functions that are carrying on with us, ar<* the cause of 

 those instinctive determinations by which the new-born child seizes 

 the nipple of its mother, and sucks the milk by a very complicatedpro- 

 cess, which directs the young of animals the moment after birth, and 

 sometimes in the very act of birth, while the limbs are yet engaged 

 in the Vagina, to seize upon the dug of their dam. Instinct, as the au- 

 thor just quoted, has very justly observed, sfv* n gs from impressions 

 received by the interior organs, whilst reaso n g is the produce of exter- 

 nal sensations; and the etymology of the w->rd instinct, composed of two 

 Greek words, signifying to prick," * c - "within,'* agrees with the 

 meaning we assign to it. 



These two parts of the understanding, reason and instinct, unite and 

 blend together, to produce the intellectual system, and the various deter- 

 minations of mental action. But the part that each bears in the genera- 

 tion of ideas, is very different in animals, whose grosser external senses 

 allow instinct to predominate; and in man, in whom the perfection of 

 these senses, and tbt art of signs, which perpetrate the transient thought, 

 augment the power of reason, while .they enfeeble instinct. It is easy to 

 conceive, that the brain, assailed by a crowd of impressions from with- 

 out, will regard less attentively, and therefore suffer to escape the greater 

 part of those that result from internal excitation. Instinct is more vigo 

 rous in savage man, and its relative perfection is his compensation for the 

 advantages which superior reason brings to man in civilization. The 

 moral and intellectual system of the individual, considered at different 

 periods of life, owes more to internal sensation, the less it is advanced; 

 for, instinct declines as reason is strengthened and enlarged. 



Thus, though all the phenomeixi of understanding have their source in 

 physical sensibility, this sensibi/ity being set in action by two sorts of 

 impressions, the brain of an in/ant just born, has already the conscious- 

 ness of those which spring frojzi the internal motion, and it is from these 

 impressions that it executes certain spontaneous movements, of whieh 

 Locke and his followers coyfd find no explanation : accordingly, thepar- 

 tizans of innate ideas, looked i,-pon them as the strongest confirmation of 

 their system; but these kleas, anterior to all action of outward objects on 

 the senses, are simple, few, and extending to a very small number of 

 wants: the child is but a fevr hours old, and already it expresses a multi- 

 tude of sensations, that throng upon it from the instant of its birth, sen- 

 sations, which have passed to the brain, combined themselves there, and 

 entered into the action of the will, with a velocity which equals, if it does 

 not surpass, that of light. 



It U only, after laying down between the sources of our knowledge, a 

 very exact line of demarcation, after scrupulously distinguishing the ra- 

 tional from the instinctive determinations, acknowledging that age, sex, 

 temperament, health, disease, climate, and habit, which modify our phy- 



2 P 



