184 PEESIDENT S ADDRESS. 



as this to aid in the correction of popular errors respecting the 

 structure and specific relations of animals, it ought to be within 

 its province to contribute towards disabusing the popular mind 

 of what may be contrary to fact in regard to the instincts and 

 mental capabilities of animals, and to ascertain what may be 

 really known on a subject possessing so much interest. This is 

 only to be done by careful induction from accurately observed 

 facts, and such facts all may give their aid in accumulating. 



To collect these facts is, however, by no means an easy matter. 

 It requires some power of mental analysis, as well as industry 

 and truthfulness. The subject is very obscure. The instincts 

 of brutes, and the relation which their faculties bear to those of 

 the human mind, touch at so many points on some of the most 

 difficult questions of mental science, that it is perhaps not sur- 

 prising that the subject has been so seldom approached, and so 

 little that is satisfactory has been written about it. Let it not 

 be thought that I profess now to supply what is wanting, or 

 to say what may not be known to many already : my wish is 

 simply to bring the subject before this meeting as one very 

 worthy of attention, and perhaps to indicate a few lines of 

 thought which may possibly prove suggestive. 



It is easy in a general way to draw a line between man and 

 the lower animals. The former, we say, is guided hy reason ; 

 the latter, governed hy instinct. This, though true as a charac- 

 teristic distinction, is, however, by no means exhaustive or accu- 

 rate as a definition. As man is not without instincts, so are 

 brutes not destitute of intelligence manifested in conduct which 

 often cannot be distinguished in Icind from similar conduct in 

 reasonable beings. There is a want of precision, also, in the 

 terms Reason and Instirict in this definition. As the term Eeason 

 is commonly applied to the faculties of the imderstanding , which 

 have to do with sense and the facts of experience alone, as well 

 as to the Reason properly so-called, the organ of thought, in- 

 cluding self-consciousness, and dealing with necessaiy convic- 

 tions and universal truths — things entirely different ; so is the 

 term Instinct loosely understood. Not only is it used to ex- 

 press the power in animals of adapting means to ends without 



