ORDER PACHYDERMATA. 369 



Referring the actions of instinct to mental powers, as Dr. 

 Darwin and Smellie have done, seems a very unsatisfactory 

 attempt at explanation, which, while it leaves the original 

 difficulty untouched, makes a distinction without a differ- 

 ence between instinct and reason ; intermediate agency, as 

 assumed by Cudworth and a more modern writer on the 

 subject, is purely hypothetical, and may be thought to be 

 rather derogatory than otherwise to that Omnipotence 

 which can surely act universally by natural final causes: 

 the conjecture in question (and it is utterly without proof) 

 seems to make creation a continued act, instead of one 

 single simple piece of exertion, if such a word be venial so 

 applied, which once having made the machine, set it in 

 motion by a simultaneous act for the destined period of its 

 existence. 



Leaving the final causes, then, of involuntary mental im- 

 pulse, or instinct properly speaking, we may proceed to a 

 brief notice of involuntary corporeal impulse or mechanism. 



Any explanation of this particular excitement to organic 

 action, or of this division of instinct, if it can be treated as 

 such, seems equally impossible with the last. It compre- 

 hends however a much wider field of action, pervades the 

 vegetable as well as animal kingdom, and is found to exist 

 either with or without sensation. The involuntary action 

 of breathing, the mechanical spring to so many other move- 

 ments; the involuntary peristaltic motion of the bowels, 

 and such like functions of animal economy, are carried on 

 without any command from the mind, apparently without 

 any interference of the cerebral organs, at least in a mass. 

 In mental instinct the mind seems to give the word to the 

 nerve, the nerve acts upon the muscle, and thus the motion 

 of the body is accomplished : the question is in what manner 

 the mind is impelled ; but in involuntary corporeal move- 

 ments, mind seems to be no party, or at least is an uncon- 

 scious agent. 



