ON INSTINCT. 21 i 



riched with the choicest collections, and the rarest curiosities of nature,* but 

 which, from a concurrence of adverse circumstances, must have fallen into 

 ruins, had not you, with laudable patronage, interposed, redecorated the 

 sinking edifice, and made it once more echo to the voice of instruction and 

 study ; — here, where the genius of Science has resumed the possession of 

 his simple throne, and is once more thronged by a numerous train of atten- 

 tive votaries — here more especially may I address these observations without 

 incurring the charge of rhapsody or extravagance. — Long may so promising 

 an Institution flourish ! soundly may it be cultivated ! and of sterling value 

 be the harvests that it produces ! 



LECTURE IV. 



ON INSTINCT. 



There are various actions, and trains of actions, occasionally to be met 

 with among mankind, but more frequently and more strikingly among other 

 animals, which indicate the employment of definite means to obtain a definite 

 end, without the intervention of that chain of thought which characterizes 

 reason, and which have hence been ascribed to a distinct principle, that has 

 been distmguished by the name of instinct. 



Such, in the new-born infant, and, indeed, in the young of all mammalian 

 animals, is the act of hunting out for the mother's milky food, and of suck- 

 ing with a perfection which can never be acquired in subsequent life. Such 

 is the whole process of nestling or nidification among birds ; the periodi- 

 cal change of salt for fresh water among the sturgeon, salmon, and other 

 fishes ; and, among insects, the formation of the exquisite decoy-lines of 

 the spider, and the nice masonry of the bee, and of the termes hellicosus or 

 white ant. 



The common fact admits of no dispute ; the modes of accounting for it 

 have been various, and in the utmost degree unsatisfactory. In a general 

 survey they may be resolved into three classes : first, those hypotheses which 

 ascribe the whole to the operation of body alone ; secondly, those which 

 ascribe it to mind alone ; and, thirdly, those which derive it from a substance 

 of a mediate nature between the two, or attribute it partly to the one and 

 partly to the other. 



In pursuing this highly interesting subject, I shall first briefly notice the 

 principal opinions which have been offered upon it, in the order thus laid 

 down, and point out their irrelevancy : and then propose a new theory, and 

 explain the grounds upon which it is founded. 



I. It was the opinion of Des Cartes that brutes are mere mechanical ma- 

 chines : that they have neither ideas nor sensation ; neither pain nor plea- 

 sure ; and that their outcries under punishment, and their alacrity in pur- 

 suing an enemy or devouring a meal are produced by the very same sort of 

 force, which, exerted upon the different keys of an organ, compels its respect- 

 ive pipes to give forth diff"erent sounds. And a great part of the Cardinal 

 Polignac's very elegant Latin poem, entitled Anti-Lucretius, is written in 

 direct support of this most whimsical hypothesis. I shall, perhaps, have 

 occasion to examine it somewhat more at large in a subsequent study : for 

 the present it may be sufficient to observe that, in spite of all the philosophy 

 in the world, the coachman to this hour has whipped, and will yet continue 

 to whip, his horses, the huntsman to halloo his hounds, and the bird-trainer 

 to sing or whistle to his bullfinches ; though if the whole were mere mecha- 



♦ Formerly celebrated as the Leverian' Museum, and erected for that purpose. 

 2 



