IV 
ON INSTINCT IN MAN AND ANIMALS 
THE most perfect and most striking examples of what is 
termed instinct—those in which reason or observation appear 
to have the least influence, and which seem to imply the 
possession of faculties farthest removed from our own—are to 
be found among insects. The marvellous constructive powers 
of bees and wasps, the social economy of ants, the careful 
provision for the safety of a progeny they are never to see 
manifested by many beetles and flies, and the curious pre- 
parations for the pupa state by the larve of butterflies and 
moths, are typical examples of this faculty, and are supposed 
to be conclusive as to the existence of some power or intelli- 
gence very different from that which we derive from our 
senses or from our reason. 
How Instinct may be best Studied 
Whatever we may define instinct to be, it is evidently some 
form of mental manifestation, and as we can only judge of mind 
by the analogy of our own mental functions and by observa- 
tion of the results of mental action in other men and in 
animals, it is incumbent on us, first, to study and endeavour 
to comprehend the minds of infants, of savage men, and of 
animals not very far removed from ourselves, before we 
pronounce positively as to the nature of the mental operations 
in creatures so radically different from us as insects. We have 
not yet even been able to ascertain what are the senses they 
possess, or what relation their powers of seeing, hearing, and 
feeling have to ours. Their sight may far exceed ours both 
in delicacy and in range, and may possibly give them know. 
