224 



ON THE DISTINCTIVE CHARACTERS OF 



instinctive power that produces the one change produces also the other ; and 

 as in the former case we have a perfect consciousness that the effect takes 

 place without anj' sensation or intelligence, no man will be so extravagant 

 as to maintain that there is any sensation or intelligence concerned in the 

 latter. But the very same process that produces the leaves or shoots of 

 plants produces also their buds; the vegetable vessels are the same; there 

 is no new principle employed, but merely an adaptation of the one common 

 principle of instinct or the law of simple life to the production of a different 

 effect ; for the very same eye may, by too much or too little pruning of the 

 wood, be converted into a shoot or into a bud. The buds of plants, however, 

 are their proper offspring ; and in many cases as perfectly so as their seed- 

 lings, or those reared from seeds. In other instances we find a progeny 

 equally perfect produced by a separation of bulbs or roots, or by radicles 

 shooting out from creeping joints, as in the strawberry. In all which it 

 would be absurd, even if plants were possessed of a nervous system, which 

 they are not, to contend that a sense of feeling was more exerted than in the 

 reproduction of the separate organs of an animal, to support the common 

 wear and tear of animal life. 



Why, then, should it ever have been contended that such a kind of sensation 

 is necessary in the formation of seeds, by the conjoint action of what have been 

 denominated a male and female organization 1 The stimulus of moisture, of 

 light, heat, and air, evolves equally the specific flower ; and the ever-present 

 and all-pervading law of Nature determines the different parts of the flower, 

 or the different flowers themselves, to be of different characters : the farina 

 is secreted- from the anther, a part which is called the male organ ; and as it 

 drops upon the open tube of the pistil, which is denominated the female organ, 

 it becomes a new stimulus, and excites to a new action. But neither stimulus 

 nor action are necessarily sensation, nor the sources of sensation. The 

 pistil, or rather the receptacle which lies at the bottom of the pistil, in 

 consequence of this new excitation, evolves or produces a new material, 

 which we call a seed ; but during the formation and evolution of this seed, 

 from first to last, there is no more necessity for supposing the existence of any 

 thing like sensation, than during the antecedent stimulus of the light, and heat, 

 and moisture, upon the parent stem by which the flower itself became evolved ; 

 or during the same stimulus upon the joints or bulbs of the plant by which 

 an equally healthy and perfect progeny has, perhaps, been produced from these 

 different organs. 



I have already observed, that in the lowest class of animals we meet with 

 instances of reproduction equally varied, and of the very same nature : some- 

 times by buds or bulbs, as in the case of the polype ; sometimes by slips or 

 lateral offsets, as in one or two species of the leech ; and sometimes, and per- 

 haps more generally, by seeds or ova. But as, in the tribes I now refer to, 

 we meet with neither nerves or nervous system, and as the reproduction 

 of living matter does not necessarily demand the existence of a nervous 

 system, or of that corporeal feeling to which alone, so far as we are acquainted 

 with nature, a nervous system is capable of giving birth ; we have the strongest 

 reason for supposing that the generation of progeny is, in these cases, as un- 

 accompanied with passion or sensation as in the instance of plants. 



I have dwelt the longer upon this subject, as being anxious to divest one 

 of the most elegant and interesting branches of natural history of the gross- 

 ness and indelicacy with which it has been incrusted by the language and 

 opinions of many modern physiologists ; and to open it as widely as possible 

 to the study and pursuit of every one. 



It must be obvious, I think, that instinct has no more necessary connexion 

 with feeling or sensation than with inteUigence ; and that even the faculties 

 of attachment to life, resistance to destruction, the economy of pairing, and 

 the process of generation, though often combined with both sensation and 

 intelligence, are not necessarily combined with either of them ; that intelli- 

 gence is not more discrepant from sensation than sensation is from instinct ; 

 that either may exist separately, and that all may exist together. 



