ORDER PACHYDERM ATA. 367 



instinct. It is perhaps above the attainment of man's highest 

 reason, and not to be compared with the other acts of the 

 creature in question. It has no appearance of a mixture 

 with reason, and is perfectly without volition. Each spe- 

 cies of bird can make its nest in no other manner, and is 

 impelled by an impetus, over which it has no control, to 

 make its nest in its own particular form, in due season. 

 The migrations of certain species, and many other actions 

 of birds, are not less unequivocal in their nature than ni- 

 dification, though less universally applicable. 



The utmost refinement of human reason, by the aid of 

 artificial education, can only succeed, in some cases, in dis- 

 covering the perfections of instinct, while the creature in 

 whom it is exercised is so low in the intellectual scale in 

 all other respects, as to render its possession of a reasoning 

 faculty perfectly problematical. There cannot be a doubt, 

 therefore, that pure instinct is in all cases the act of a 

 higher immaterial power, whose providential care is ever 

 active in preserving what was at first thought worthy of 

 creation. Like a tender parent with his children He leaves 

 indifferent matters to the indifferent choice of His weak 

 creatures, but restrains them by an uncontrollable, yet 

 gentle force, from that individual as well as total destruc- 

 tion on which through their own weakness and inefficacy 

 they would otherwise rush. 



But the great question is as to the modus operandi. Can 

 we presume that the great Creator and Governor of the Uni- 

 verse descends in person to superintend the construction of 

 a honeycomb, or a nest, or the migration of a swallow ? 

 Have we any data to warrant the supposition of interme- 

 diate superior agency. Does not Nature, that is, God, act 

 by general, not by partial laws, and is it not agreeable with 

 all analogy, that, as he endowed bodies with gravitation (a 

 principle we are as ignorant of as that of instinct), and 

 subjected matter to those conditions under which it exists, 



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