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Reason and Instinct. 



by Almighty Wisdom to act" in this particular manner, and no other : 

 that is Instinct, or an impulse of Instinct.* 



However, it is neither my wish nor intention to found much on an 

 argument which, in a measure, may be said to be derived from an un- 

 wary admission. If man ever acts under or in obedience to the 

 impulses of Instinct, a little careful observation and thought will, 

 without doubt, soon render it apparent to any reasonable and candid 

 person that the case is so. Now I think that the action of the infant, 

 alleged as an illustration of instinctive actions in our definitions above 

 given, is one which admits of no question as to its origin. No one 

 would ever think of denying that the young animal of any other spe- 

 cies save the human seeks its mother's dug by Instinct ; and it is 

 simply preposterous to set up a distinction between the act of sucking 

 as done by a human infant and the same act as done by an infant 

 brute. And be it observed that it is not a simple desire in this case : 

 the desire of food may be felt, but it is something beyond the simple 

 desire which prompts the seizure of the pap by the lips and all the 

 complicated proceedings which constitute the act of sucking, as it is 

 something beyond a simple desire which urges the just-hatched duck- 

 ling into the water and prompts all the complicated proceedings which 

 constitute the act of swimming. What the simple desire of food 

 prompts to, as far as I have seen, is squalling in the infant and 

 squeaking in the small pig. 



Again, who doubts that if a male and female infant were thrown 

 together on an otherwise uninhabited island, and, by a strange com- 

 bination of circumstances, — neither unimaginable, however, nor un- 

 imagined, — were to arrrive at years of puberty, there would be a 

 continuation of the human species in that island? Indeed I may 

 distinctly state that I am in possession of facts relative to both sexes 

 which establish, beyond all dispute, the existence of the sexual in- 

 stinct — I repeat instinct, and not desire, the existence of which needs 

 not to be established — in the human species. 



Further, I might quote a hundred different instances in which ani- 

 mals, — the cat, the dog, the pig, the donkey, the cow, — having been 

 transported to a distance (in some cases by the agency of their own 

 limbs, in other cases in baskets, sacks, carriages, ships) from their 

 accustomed place of habitation, have, on finding themselves at liberty, 

 returned to their former home ; very possibly taking long, toilsome 



* " The cbild is led to seek the society of other children, hij an impulse which he 

 cannot resist, and which is independent of any inlellcctual operation." — Brodie, 197. 



