“ORDINARY MEETING.* 
Toe Rev. F. A. Wanker, D.D., F.L.S., IN THE CHAIR. 
The Minutes of the last Meeting were read and confirmed, and sixty 
Elections took place (see page 32), after which the following paper was 
read by the author :— 
INSTINCT AND REASON. By CUTHBERT COLLINGWOOD, 
Esq., M.A., B.M. Oxon, M.R.C.P., F.L.S., &e, 
Instinct signifies those natural powers with which all animals 
are born, and which are sufficient for the carrying out of the two 
great bodily functions of nutrition (including self-preservation) 
and reproduction, which constitute the sum-total of their exis- 
tence. 
Reason is the special characteristic of Man, unshared (in its 
higher regions, at least) by animals,—by the agency of which he 
is able to accumulate impressions,—in its lower regions, from 
without, and in its higher regions, from within ; by which im- 
pressions the faculties are aroused and developed,—which faculties 
are, especially in those higher regions, vastly in advance of, and 
distinct in kind from, any endowments of animals. Moreover, 
these faculties exist in Man only potentially at birth. 
T is not many years since that the Cartesian theory (so- 
called) of animal automatism was tentatively offered to 
the scientific world from a high authority; a theory which 
suggested that the lower animals were but machines, im- 
pelled to movement and apparent life by a merely uncon- 
scious reflex action, alike without feeling or instinct, in any 
true sense of the term. The theory, it is true, met with ro 
general acceptance, and has since been consigned to the 
limbo of pseudo-scientific vagaries. Now, on the contrary, 
instead of being automata, animals are placed virtually upon 
a level with Man, both as regards their physical organisation 
* December 2, 1889. 
VOT. XXIV. H 
