6050 



Reason and Instinct. 



this subject; and, what is remarkable, the author, in effect, goes on 

 in the succeeding paragraph, to say there are many recorded actions 

 of animals which cannot be consistently set down under the category 

 he proposes, viz. the extraordinary " but numerous and well- 

 authenticated actions of dogs for the preservation of their masters' 

 lives, and even for the avenging of their deaths. In these instances 

 we have the third species of the adaptive power in connexion with an 

 apparently moral end — with an end in the proper sense of the word. 

 Here the adaptive power co-exists with a purpose apparently volun- 

 tary, and the action seems neither predetermined by the organization 

 of the animal, nor in the direct reference to his own preservation, nor 

 to the continuance of his race. . . . This, I admit, is a problem of 

 w^hich I have no solution to offer." — {Id. i. 195). This problem or 

 difficulty, it certainly does seem, arises simply from, so to speak, 

 stretching Instinct until it ceases to be instinctive and becomes ra- 

 tional. As Professor Green says, after speaking of Hiiber's Bees 

 {Id, ii. 9), " Here we are puzzled ; for this becomes understanding." 

 It is a puzzle, and the thing referred to is understanding. But the 

 puzzle is avoided (though not in Professor Green's way), and the 

 problem ceases to be a problem by letting Instinct be what its deriva- 

 tion makes it and our definitions describe it as being, and by letting 

 whatever else in the list of an animal's actions there may be, which 

 cannot be bounded and delineated by those definitions, be termed 

 rational or intelligent, or described as due to Reason — albeit to 

 Reason, as we are ready to admit — in its low er sense or degree. At all 

 events this seems to be better and more consistent, with both fact and 

 reason, than the conclusion adopted by Professor Green, that " though 

 instinct is not the same and identical with the human understanding, 

 the difference is not in the essential of the definition, but in an addi- 

 tion to or modification of that which is essentially the same in both :" 

 or, as it stands in Coleridge's words, that if I suppose the adaptive 

 power in its highest species^ or form of instinctive intelligence, to co- 

 exist with reason, free will and self-consciousness, it instantly becomes 

 understanding ; in other words, that understanding diflfers indeed from 

 the noblest form of instinct, but not in itself or in its own essential 

 properties, but in consequence of its co-existence with far higher 

 powers of a diverse kind in one and the same subject. Instinct in a 

 rational, responsible and self-conscious animal, is understanding." 



It scarcely would seem to me that the doctrine that man is moved 

 or influenced by Instinct, that he is a participant in Instinct, or in the 

 possession of Instinct, is one which calls for elaborate proof ; or that 



