Reason and Instinct, 



6045 



certain power, or property, or agent; the latter to some of the quali- 

 ties or operations, or both, of such power, property or agent ; but 

 neither one nor the other, nor both together, reveals to us what elec- 

 tricity, what magnetism, really is: and just so it is with Instinct. 

 We see the phenomena, and we see some of the laws under which 

 they recur; but the rest is all surmise, except in so far as we know- 

 that the thing we mean is implanted by God the Creator in the living 

 creature, just as we know the things we mean by electricity and mag- 

 netism are, by the same Mighty Hand, inseparably connected with the 

 material creation at large. If men of science had been apt to say, 

 We must know what electricity is in amber, glass or silk, — what 

 magnetism is in the loadstone, — before we can decide whether one or 

 the other is to be found in metallic veins, in the rocks, in the earth at 

 large, in the atmosphere," I fear we should now know very nearly 

 nothing at all about either beyond the bare fact of their existence : in 

 other words, such a proposition would have been not simply an unne- 

 cessary, but a fatal, obstacle to the acquisition of any sound or cer- 

 tain knowledge about either of those mysterious essences. I cannot, 

 therefore, agree with Mr. Tagart, that " before we can decide whether 

 animals have reason, we ought to know at least what it is in man," 

 (Zool. 5738), any more than I can that we must know what Instinct 

 essentially is before we can decide " how far animals, or creatures 

 whom we are accustomed to speak of as guided by instinct,* are par- 

 ticipants of reason " (Zool. 5737). I think that if all thoughtful men 

 are agreed on what are to be considered unquestionable indicia of 

 Reason, or signs and tokens of its exercise, it matters not, so far as 

 our inquiry is concerned, what Reason essentially is, or whether it be 

 assumed " to have its root in sensation" (Zool. 5739), or be considered 

 as an emanation from the Divine Mind in the image of which we were 

 created. Wherever I can succeed in tracing these indicia in any 



* I should say Home Tooke would express no obligation to Mr. Tagart for making him 

 out (Zool. 5737) so great a blockhead or so poor a Latin scholar. But instead of giving any 

 comment of my own on Mr. Tagart's derivation of Instinct, " after Home Tooke," I 

 prefer subjoining the comment of an etymological friend of mine. He says, " His 

 in, tinctvs^ is the veriest school-boy folly. Instinguo is identical in root with instigo^ 

 and the root is that of our ' stick,' — Greek ctt/^Wj ariy/xcc, The exact definition 

 of any word, I am inclined to hold, may be taken from its true etymology; and hence 

 you would define Instinct to be an inward pricking or goading, or something which 

 sticks into you within, like a spur. To 'distinguish' is to mark out, or separate 

 things from each other by points, — to divide into ^t/%>7 or rows : compare ' distich.* 

 As an illustration of this sense of sticking or pricking, you will remember Falstaff and 

 J ustice Shallow, when the former is ' pricking ' his men." See also Richardson's 

 English Dictionary. 



