5 



,70 Mr. French on the nature of Instinct. 



directed to the welfare of man ; not like the fixed and uniform 

 operations of Instinct, which pays no regard to Man, but, when 

 acting in the Brutes, is wholly employed in their self-preservation, 

 or in providing for their young." 



" As no man then, can clearly point out, by what delicate and 

 hidden steps, even the human mind is conducted in passing from 

 premises to conclusion ; as he cannot trace what animal propensi- 

 ties and feelings of his sensitive nature, and prejudices, and moral 

 principles govern and influence his various decisions, constituting 

 ■what he calls an act of human reason, farther than the end can be 

 accounted for by the means ; so neither can he comprehend the 

 impelling motives of the brute, except by their visible actions. If 

 these visible actions, therefore, correspond with his own ideas of 

 what is excellent in feeling and judgment, they must either pro- 

 ceed from faculties like those of that part of human nature to 

 which the brute is clearly allied, or from a much higher source. 

 But as they do not appear to belong to Instinct, or a necessary and 

 unavoidable impulse compelling them to act, nor yet to those more 

 dignified principles of the human character, of which the brute 

 shows no signs ; they may be considered analogous to those prin- 

 ciples which govern human beings themselves under corresponding 

 circumstances ; and consequently presuppose a limited degree of 

 rationality, as we strictly apply the term.* 



What, it may be here asked, are we to understand by " motives 

 and feelings worthy of a rational nature," if this rational nature is 

 to be confined to Dr. Hancock's previous limitation ; and is not 

 made to include a superior consciousness arising from that superior 

 rational intuition elsewhere ascribed by the author exclusively to 

 Man ? "Affection, gratitude and ingenuity," with other " noble and 

 excellent traits of character," are certainly observable in brutes ; 

 but the latter are, I conceive, in no degree conscious of the nature 

 of affiection, gratitude, or ingenuity, and are therefpre not ration- 

 ally (in the enlarged sense of the term, which is here implied) affec- 

 tionate, rationally grateful, or rationally ingenuous ; but instinct- 



* By " analogous," Dr. H. here evidently means " in affinity with," or 

 " the same in kind." 



