S22 



ON THE DISTINCTIVE CHARACTERS OF 



1 



equally without the faculties which it is the sole property of such organs to 

 develope. And hence, again, however curious and astonishing the powers 

 they occasionally evince, they are powers that can only be resolved, as in 

 the case of zoophytic worms, into the ever present and ever active law of 

 instinct or organized life. We hear, indeed, at times, of the ascription of 

 mental or corporeal passions to vegetables ; of general feeling and ideas ; of 

 love and languishment, and desire and aversion. But all this is fancy, and 

 proceeds from an erroneous and contracted view of the general nature of the 

 law of instinct, and its extraordinary power of supplying the place of sense 

 and reason, where these, or the organs in which they reside, are not present. 

 We hear, in like manner, occasionally, of the brain, stomach, lungs, and 

 nerves of vegetables ; but all this is still more imaginary than the preceding; 

 it is a mere fancy built upon a mere fancy : nobody has ever been capable of 

 pointing out the probable or even possible seat of such organs, and they have 

 only been idly conjectured because the faculties to which they give rise have 

 been conjectured antecedently. 



Is there, then, no such thing as instinctive feeling 1 — a term in every one's 

 mouth, and which every one, till he tries, supposes he comprehends 1 What 

 but an instinctive feeling is the love of life, the dread of death, the economy 

 of pairing, and the desire of progeny 1 



Wherever feeling exists, these, in a certain sense, may unquestionably be 

 called instinctive feelings ; but it should* be remembered that the expression 

 is, in every instance, of a compound character, and involves two distinct 

 ideas, which may exist either separately or conjointly: and we have the same 

 reason for using the phrase instinctive intelligence as instinctive feeling: for 

 we can only mean, or ought only to mean, instinct combined with intelligejice, 

 or institict combined with feeling, according to the nature of the case 

 before us. 



Combinations of this kind, indeed, are not unfrequent ; and I shall pre- 

 sently proceed to produce examples of them : but it becomes necessary to 

 observe, in the present place, that all the operations we are now adverting to, 

 and which are usually characterized as instinctive feelings, as self-preserva- 

 tion, attachment to life, resistance of destruction, reproduction of the M'hole 

 or of separate parts of the system, and even the economy of pairing, though 

 often united with feeling, and not unfrequently with intelligence as well, 

 occur, nevertheless, in a multiplicity of instances in which we have either 

 direct proofs, or the most cogent reasons for believing, that there is neither 

 feeling nor intelligence whatever ; and that every thing is the result of pure, 

 unintelligent, insentient instinct. 



I have just observed that the blood is alive : it has all the common properties 

 of life; irritability, contractility, and a power of maintaining its natural scale 

 of heat, whatever be the temperature of the atmosphere by which it is sur- 

 rounded : and it is perpetually showing its attachment to life by the due and 

 discretionary exercise of these properties with a view of preserving life. It 

 equally resists every excess of cold or of heat that may be injurious to it, 

 and hence sometimes raises the thermometer and sometimes depresses it: it 

 contracts itself, like the muscular fibre, upon the application of an appropriate 

 stimulus, and conveys the principle of life, and powerfully assists in applying 

 that principle to parts in which the vital action is languid, or has altogether 

 ceased. There is no part of the animal system that evinces in a more emi- 

 nent degree the faculty of self-preservation, or self-production, of attachment 

 to life, or of iresistance to whatever is injurious, than the blood ; and yet every 

 one knows that this faculty is pure, unmixed instinct, equally destitute of 

 feeling or intelligence : it is, as I have already defined instinct to be in every 

 instance, a " simple operation of the principle of organized life by the exercise 

 of certain natural powers directed to the present or future good of the 

 individual."* 



In the new-laid egg we have an equal proof of the same faculty of self- 



* Compare here Girtanner's M6moires sur I'lrritabilit^, consider6e comme Principe de Vie dans la Nature 

 organis6e.— Journ. de Physique, 1790. 



