On the Specific Consliiution of the Brute Mind. 347 



comparing them in this respect : — whereas the essential intelli- 

 gence of invariable instinct, is not proper to the brute, but takes 

 the form, in his conscious mind, of simple intuitive perception, 

 which he is at no pains to analyse ; being possessed of no com- 

 petent faculty to enable him to reflect upon it. There is therefore 

 in the consciousness of Brutes, with respect to this intelligence, no 

 affinity with human consciousness. Thus while a child from the 

 exertion of its proper intelligence acquires the idea, the ability, of 

 balancing the fluid in its spoon ; the Antlion, from covinnmicated 

 perception^ or instinct, performs a similar equilibrium with sand, 

 as if by habit.*^ This perception may be said to be injluent awA 

 transjluent : it does not proceed from the proper intelligence of 

 the creature, but is derived from a superior principle^ to which it 

 is merely analogous ; it is thus influent : — and it is not fixied by 

 any reflection exerted upon the essential nature of its discri- 

 minations, considered objectively^ — or viewed from any prin- 

 ciple of intelligence, — either before or subsequent to the act; but 

 it passes off'm the act: it is thus transfluent. Proper intelligence 

 is thus inconsistent with this species of instinct ; yet the latter is 

 nevertheless not mechanical; since the intuitive perception itself 

 forms a ground of consciousness of action ; and constitutes the 

 basis of a middle conscious nature, between mere irritability, 

 (which is an inferior effect of life, related analogically to con- 

 sciousness,) and the intellectual consciousness of man. It is then 

 most evident, that a distinction must be taken between essential 

 principles of action and the conscious nature of the being in which 

 such essential principles are derivatively exhibited. 



* See Introductory Essay; Zool. Journ. No. 1. p. 24. 



How exclusively the human mind is left to acquire ideas of relation in free- 

 dom, where the means of acquiring them are afforded; and how few and 

 barren those ideas are where the means of improvement are wanting ; is made 

 evident by the facts related of Wild Men, or individuals who have been for- 

 tuitously reared apart from the society of their fellow creatures, in woods and 

 unfrequented districts. The well known history of Peter the Wild Boy, with 

 that of the Savage of Aveyron, and others, afford striking illustrations of the 

 truth of the proposition, that the rational intelligence of man is different in 

 hind from the apparesit intelligence of the brute. 



Occasion will arise, in the course of the present inquiry, for a particular 

 examination of the various facts of this nature which Iiavc been recorded. 



