Reason and Instinct. 5577 



Nor do the instincts peculiar to man ever cease to act as long as 

 our life is continued to us, except, of course, in some abnormal condi- 

 tion of the individual induced by severe mental or bodily illness ; more 

 frequently the former. By instinct we appease our hunger and our 

 thirst ; by instinct we love our parents and our children ; and by in- 

 stinct we associate ourselves into communities, within narrower or 

 more extensive limits, the end or result of which is " mutual society, 

 help and comfort." * 



Yes, we may behold that spark of the Divine, man's intellectual 

 powers, or human reason, shining so gloriously in Newton, glaring so 

 stormily in Napoleon Bonaparte, beaming so nobly in Milton, "paling 

 such ineffectual fires" in the poor Digger or Australian; but we 

 behold, too, that no one of all these, that no one of all the countless 

 myriads of mankind, from the mightiest and most renowned to the 

 meanest and most nameless, but has been, whatever his attributes and 

 endowments of mind and reason, a creature of instincts, from the hour 

 of his birth to that of his death : and, moreover, these instincts preceded 

 his reason in his early infancy, and in multitudes of cases, they outlasted 

 his reason during the closing " days of the years of his life." 



And if we are to be guided by analogy in our inquiries and 

 researches, in my opinion the inference or induction to which we are 

 forcibly impelled by what we have, alike by the natural results of 

 thoughtful observation and by a train of independent reasoning, been 

 led to admit as to the identity of essence of the mental principle in 

 man and in the inferior orders of animals, is that, in the brute creation, 

 too, instinct and reason co-exist ; that, at least, with certain limita- 

 tions, and subject to certain definitions, instinct presupposes reason. 



And here, possibly, it may serve, partly in the way of illustration, 

 and partly, may be, in the way of confirmation of our inference, if we 

 regard the endowment or faculty of instinct from a somewhat different 

 point of view. In our former paper we considered instinctive actions 

 rather as contrasted with rational actions and with mechanical actions. 

 Let us now consider them as to their own essential character, as to 

 what they are in themselves. We shall certainly not be accused of 

 mis-statement if we allege that, without an exception, purely instinc- 

 tive actions are directed — not by the intention of the individual agent 

 or agents immediately concerned, but under an immutable law of 

 creation — to the end of promoting the well-being and preservation of 



* " The desire to live in society is as much an instinct in man as it is in the hee, 

 ov the ant, or the beaver, or the prairie do<>." — Phys. Res. p. Ii)6. 



XV. 2 H 



