5578 Reason and Instinct. 



the individual or to the continuation of the species. Under this law, 

 the bird of passage migrates as well as builds its nest; the salmon re- 

 visits its native streams and deposits its spawn in their head-waters ; 

 the young dog or ferret acknowledges the scent of its destined prey, 

 and employs its physical resources in the attempt to capture it. 

 Under this law, too, the bee builds its comb as nicely and correctly 

 as though guided by exact mathematical science and enabled by the 

 highest mechanical skill ; the ant-lion constructs its pit-fall ; and a 

 third insect, after depositing its egg in the prepared cell, inserts like- 

 wise two or three grubs, paralyzed but not killed, lest they should 

 decay and so defeat the object of their captor, to serve as the un- 

 resisting food of its offspring until such time as it shall cease to be a 

 grub itself. While to this same law, likewise, must be referred the 

 several instinctive actions, or series of actions continually performed 

 by mankind. But, in the last-mentioned instance, reason, at a very 

 early period, as we have observed, is known to supervene, and, pro- 

 gressively advancing in activity and vigour, ultimately assumes dimen- 

 sions of such magnitude and so conspicuous that it altogether domi- 

 nates and throws into shade each of the simple instincts ; always 

 excepting the case of the more or less completely uncivilized, or of 

 those in worse condition still for the evolution of the higher charac- 

 teristics of humanity, the more or less completely demoralized. And 

 why ? Beyond all question, because only by the due development of 

 human reason, differing widely, no doubt, both as to original endow- 

 ment and subsequent cultivation or improvement, in different com- 

 munities, — and as widely, too, in different individuals in the same 

 community, — can those functions and duties be discharged which it 

 pleased the Creator, after He had made man in His own image, to 

 allot to him as the part he had to fulfil in the great general scheme of 

 creation. And as to the other instances quoted, how stands the 

 matter with them ? Is it quite certain there is no analogous or even 

 similar progression of what clearly is not instinct, and as clearly can 

 be nothing short of some degree of reason ? Nay, is it even certain 

 that, in the great scheme of the Allwise, there may not exist a 

 necessity, similar to that we have noticed in the instance of mankind, 

 that the inferior orders of animals should be possessed of, and capable 

 of developing and even improving, each of them their own appropriate 

 measure or degree of intellect? As for myself, I feel pleasure in 

 stating the entire coincidence of my own sentiments with those I now 

 proceed to subjoin : — " It is in the proportion which their instincts and 

 intelligence bear to each other that the difference between the mind 

 of man and that of other animals chiefly consists. Reasoning is not 



