DR. VIREY ON 



INSTINCT 



AND INTELLIGENCE. 



57 



Reason, on the contrary, receiving impressions and images from 

 without, or by the external senses, transforms them into ideas in the 

 brain, compares and coolly judges of them, arranges its actions by 

 them, determines voluntarily in consequence, by what appears true, 

 or just, or best, according to occurrences, climates, &c. This is the 

 peculiar faculty of reasoning man ; he acts by his free will in several 

 ways. 



The ancients in the same way distinguished two faculties or powers 

 of the soul : first, the appetites, the affections, and all the passions 

 belonging to instinct in the unreasoning part of the soul ; that is, the 

 dominion of the heart, and all interior movements. But thought, 

 reason, speech, consideration, are the fruit of meditation in the mind 

 or brain. The brutes were not deemed to act by free will, but to be 

 impelled by spontaneous necessity, or the instigation of nature, as if 

 by divine inspiration. So said Cicero, and such was the universal 

 opinion of the ancient philosophers, Plato, Aristotle, and all those who 

 have treated of the soul and the moral faculties. (Scaliger, Exerc. 

 Subt. 307, No. 5 ; et Stahl, Differentia Rationis et Ratiocinii, etc.) 



But instinct never acts more completely than among those animals 

 which are the least endowed with acquired knowledge. It is clear, 

 that these little creatures, such as insects, each of which scarcely lives 

 more than a few weeks in the world, could not have time, or means to 

 acquire, like a child, any information by education or habit, to accom- 

 plish the destinies which nature has designed them. We must there- 

 fore attribute to them a mind ready formed and enlightened, and even 

 incapable of acting otherwise. But man, and the larger species of 

 animals who exist longer, and who possess organs and senses more 

 evolved, a remarkable brain, and therefore functions less limited, 

 and which can vary their actions according to circumstances, must 

 participate more or less of liberty, of acquired knowledge, and of 

 understanding. Instinct becomes secondary with the latter in pro- 

 portion as the intellectual functions are greater and able to replace it. 

 Therefore man, when endowed with reason so highly cultivated as to 

 become sometimes sublime, is almost totally devoid of instinct, par- 

 ticularly in a state of civilisation ; his taste and his sense of smelling, 

 for example, being weaned from natural aliments, are no longer able 

 to discern, in the forests of America, a wholesome fruit from the 

 poisonous manchineel, which has a sweet smell ; he must take as a 

 guide the rustic savage, whose instinct is less depraved by the arts of 

 the kitchen, by which we disguise all nature. This savage would be 

 again surpassed by the instinct of the ape. 



Do we wish this directing and preserving power to become apparent? 



