ON INSTINCT. 



215 



1 have already observed, if they do derive it from mind alone, they will be 

 compelled to admit its existence in a thousand cas,<»s in which not a single 

 attribute of mind can be traced ; while, if they derive it from body alone, they 

 offer a cause that is inadequate to the effect produced. 



M. Cuvier has taken aground still different from any of these philosophers. 

 He has not, indeed, expressly written upon the subject, but in a very accurate 

 description of a somewhat singular ourang-outang,* he sufficiently unfolds 

 his opinion, that instinct consists of ideas which do not originate from sensa- 

 tion, but flow immediately from the brain, and are truly innate. His words 

 are as follows : " The understanding may have ideas without the aid of the 

 senses ; two-thirds of the brute creation are moved by ideas which they do not 

 owe to their sensations, but which flow immediately from their brain. In- 

 stinct constitutes this order of phenomena: it is composed of ideas truly 

 innate, in which the senses have never had the smallest share." There is a 

 perplexity in this passage, which I am surprised at in the writings of so exact 

 a physiologist : it first confounds instincts with ideas, as other philosophers 

 have confounded them with feelings ; and next affirms that ideas may flow 

 from the brain without the aid of the external senses. That " the understand- 

 ing may have ideas without the aid of the senses," I admit ; but then it can- 

 not have them from the brain, this being the very foundation and fountain of 

 the senses ; that from which they rise, and that in which they terminate. 

 The understanding may, undoubtedly, have ideas from the exercise of its 

 own proper powers alone, but this can only be the case with pure intellectual 

 beings, and to assimilate the faculty of instinct with a faculty of this exalted 

 character, is to clothe brutes with endowments superior to those of mankind; 

 it is to elevate the ourang-outang above an Aristotle or a Bacon. 



Hence M. Dupont de Nemours, in an article read before the National 

 Institute in 1807, advises to drop the term instinct altogether, as the only 

 means of avoiding the rocks on some of which every writer has shipwrecked 

 himself. He asserts, that there is in fact no such thing in existence ; and that 

 every action which has hitherto been described under such name is the mere 

 result of intelligence, of thought, habit, example, or the association of ideas. 

 But this is only to revive, in a new form, the theory of Darwin or of Smellie ; 

 while it is only necessary to advert to the explanatory examples offered by M. 

 Dupont himself, to see that many of them are utterly incapable, by any in- 

 genuity whatever, of being resolved into a principle either of intelligence or 

 of mechanism. f 



Nothing, therefore, is clearer than that the principle of instinct has 

 hitherto never been explicitly pointed out, nor even the term itself precisely 

 defined : it has been derived from mechanical powers, from mental powers, 

 from both together, and from an imaginary intermediate essence, supposed 

 equally to pervade all imbodied matter, and to give it form and structure. It 

 has been made sometimes to include the sensations, sometimes the passions, 

 sometimes the reason, and sometimes the ideas : it has sometimes been re 

 stricted to animals, and sometimes extended to vegetable life. J 



* Annales du Museum et d'Hist. Nat. torn. xvi. p. 46. 

 t Magazine Encyclopedique, Feb. 1807, p. 437. 



X Dr. Hancock has lately published a very elaborate volume upon this subject, in virMch he takes a Just 

 view of the instinctive powers of animals, and is half-disposed to allow the same faculty to plants. But 

 in merely distinguishing this faculty from reason, in the same way in which he distinguishes what have 

 hitherto been called innate principles, a moral sense or faculty, light of nature, divine reason, as contra- 

 disiinguiphed from human reason, spiritual power, internal teaching, and even impulse and inspiration of 

 the Holy Spirit, all which he contemplates as intelligences of a like kind, or, to adopt his own words, 

 " which we can only regard as an emanation of Divine Wisdom," he has so completely generalized the 

 subject, not to say apparently blended into a common principle powers which have usually been regarded 

 as specifically discrepant from each other,— even allowing the exi.stence of the whole of them, and that they 

 all flow, as in such case they must necessarily do, from the same almighty Source of being, — that the pecu- 

 liar nature of the instinctive faculty is left in as much obscurity as ever. 



Dr. Hancock has tvodden over an extensive ground of both physical and metaphysical research, and the 

 excellent spirit with which he writes entitles him to the esteem of every good man. Yet I am at a loss to 

 determine why the principle of nnison, or the reasoning soul in man, should not have as fair a claim to ori- 

 ginate from the divine energy that pervades every part of nature, from the minutest atom to the highest 

 spiritual afflation, as the faculty oi' instinct. By throwing, however, the jirinciple of human reason out of 

 the general pale, and by associating instinct with the high alliances just adverted to, the " unconscious intelli- 

 gence," aB Dr. Hancock has denoniinaled it ol' the lowest part of the animal creation, even that of insecta 



