6082 



Reason and Instinct. 



inevitably, becomes clothed upon again with some of his instinctive 

 habits, and loses some of the finer functions of Reason : and that it is 

 difficult to say how far this may hold good ; difficult, I mean, from 

 the exceeding difficulty, or rather:, ihe impossibility of tracing histo- 

 rically the records of continuo vs declension, in the case of any 

 degraded community, from what was, at least presumably, its once 

 higher condition as to civilization, its once higher moral and intel- 

 lectual standing. 



T hardly know whether the limits of a paper in the ' Zoologist' will 

 permit me to do much more than simply trace the outline of observa- 

 tion and argument by w^hich these positions are supported. To con- 

 vert the sketch into a finished drawing might occupy both too much 

 time and too much space. Perhaps our simplest course may be to 

 attempt at the outset to enumerate or classify the several lines of force 

 or directions of impulse in which Instinct appears to operate in the 

 inferior animals, and then to inquire what degree of analogy is 

 traceable between such and such actions or lines of action common 

 in the several cases of them and of mankind. 



I should say that, allowing for a few anomalous instances which, in 

 our present state and degree of information, seem to admit neither of 

 explanation or of classification, all, or very near all, the instinctive 

 actions of the various animals may be brought under one or the other 

 of the following heads : — 



I. Fear or self-preservation : by which, in various ways, almost 

 equally numerous with the varieties of animals themselves, they are 

 impelled to the effort to avoid danger. 



II. Food-craving : by which they are enabled to discover supplies 

 of suitable aliment; to discriminate between the suitable and the 

 unsuitable ; to adopt the necessary means of securing it by the 

 appropriate use of their various faculties and endowments of sense 

 and body ; and so on. 



III. Sexual love : by which they are impelled to coition, or coha- 

 bitation for one season or more ; to nidification, whether more or less 

 elaborate ; to the concealment of their young ; to the various modes 

 of providing for their young; and the like, according to their several 

 tribes or habits or peculiarities. 



IV. Association : by which the various gregarious creatures, 

 w^iether habitually or periodically, according to sex or according to 

 season, under the ties of family or under those of species or 

 pursuit of some common object — food for instance — live in com- 

 munities. 



