Reason and Instinct. 



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word Reason in our inquiry ; but it does not appear to me that Mr. 

 Tagart's remarks are at all intended to apply to that difficulty. It is 

 of course obvious that there is an immense difference, not only be- 

 tween the highest exercise of reason in the brute and the same in 

 man, but between the lowest and the highest operations of reason in 

 any highly intellectual human creature : and this has led to the desire 

 and the effort, in more than one powerful and metaphysical thinker, 

 to restrict the use of the word Reason to those of man's intellectual 

 powers capable of the highest exercise, proposing to designate the 

 other and lower by the term Understanding. In this sense they deny 

 that brutes have Reason at all ; and, admitting that they have under- 

 standing, yet do not admit even this in the same sense in which they 

 speak of the human understanding, but allege that the brute under- 

 standing is a merely instinctive understanding, or a necessary develop- 

 ment of the powers of Instinct under certain contingent laws, but 

 determinable by the nature and habits of the animal itself. While 

 holding different views on this latter point — and I shall presently seek 

 to show the grounds of my dissent — I am ready most freely to admit 

 that it is highly desirable to assert the vast distinction between what 

 they severally designate as Reason and as Understanding: yet, as it 

 appears to me, there are peculiar difficulties in the way of attempting 

 to do so by the appropriation of the word Reason to man's highest 

 intellectual power; one of which is this, that while we should have 

 two nouns, Reason and Understanding, standing for things very widely 

 distinct, we should have but the one verb, ' to reason,' to denote the 

 distinct action of each of the essences designated ; and not only so, 

 but that this verb would be fully as appropriate when applied in 

 connexion with that noun to which it is not paronymous, nor indeed 

 even homologous, as when used in connexion with its conjugate; so 

 that if we wished to speak of the exercise, by the brute animals, of 

 the intellectual faculties they are admitted to possess, while, by what 

 we may term verbal necessity, we should have to say that they are 

 able to reason and often do reason, we must yet by the definition deny 

 to them any possession of the faculty of Reason. This difficulty is 

 more clearly seen by a reference to the definitions these writers give 

 of Reason and Understanding, which they assert to be " distinct in 

 kind." The latter, they say, is " the faculty judging (that judges) ac- 

 cording to sense " (Coleridge, ' Aids to Reflection,' i. 168) ; the former, 

 '4he power of universal and necessary convictions ; the source and sub- 

 stance of truths above sense, and having their evidence in themselves ;" 

 or, the source of necessary and universal principles, according to 



