364 CLASS MAMMALIA. 



only expect to see instinct displayed in the human subject : 

 first, as connected with these ends ; and, secondly, as aux- 

 iliaries to reason. It is during nonage, therefore, and 

 during a morbid state of the intellectual organs, that we 

 may expect to find the most decided traces of instinct. 

 Education, prejudice, and association, will also under these 

 circumstances have less influence, and a discrimination 

 between their effects and those of pure instinct will conse- 

 quently be more easy of detection. To content ourselves 

 therefore with a single example, let us inquire whether the 

 new-born babe exhibits any symptoms of the stimulation in 

 question. The affirmative, as well as the negative of this 

 position, have been respectively contended for. The action 

 of sucking in the infant, it has been said, (we think indeed 

 without foundation) is acquired. A healthy infant within 

 a quarter of an hour after the reception of air into the 

 lungs, will turn its head from side to side, apparently, may 

 evidently seeking something; that this something is to 

 suck, is certain, for whether it be the mamma of its mo- 

 ther, or any other object offered to the mouth, it immedi- 

 ately commences the operation of sucking. That a difficulty 

 sometimes attends this desirable object of the nursery is 

 notorious ; but it frequently happens without the slightest 

 objection ; nor can it in any case result from teaching, from 

 experience, or from anything like reason in the helpless 

 creature in question. Reason has not assumed her seat in 

 the vacant mind ; instruction, in the simplest form, has hi- 

 therto had no access to it; association, which implies ex- 

 perience, observation, comparison, and deduction, is as yet 

 an undeveloped germ, and this pitiable type of human im- 

 becility would quickly sink into that non-entity whence it 

 has just emerged, were it not that its Creator by His pro- 

 vidence brings instinct to its aid, and if he do not teach it 

 to suck, impells it-by an unconscious stimulus to that mean 

 of preservation. 



