176 



ON SAGACITY AND INSTINCT. 



This is the principal difference between reason and instinct, 



" Reason serves when press'd, 



But honest instinct comes a volunteer." — Pope. 



Instinct acts without consideration, without reflection or thought ; it 

 needs no instruction, nor experience, nor trial, but its impulses are 

 mechanical, and its effects certain. Witness the bee ; what can exceed 

 the beauty and regularity of the honey-comb ? What labour and 

 reflection would it not have cost man to build it ? It is formed in the 

 best possible manner for strength and economy of room ; but the archi- 

 tect acts without any plan or model ; has no idea of what the fabric 

 will be when completed, nor has it thought what will be the best 

 method of forming it ; but it has no idea of any other plan than that 

 which it adopts, and acts without experience and without instruction, 

 guided solely by instinct, thus in many instances superior to reason. 



There is another wide difference between these faculties : as instinct 

 requires no previous trial to insure its effects, but is implanted in all ani- 

 mals from the time of their birth, so it is susceptible of no improvement ; 

 domestication, on the contrary, impairs it ; for inferior animals, as well 

 as man, lose in some measure their powers of discerning what food is 

 wholesome and what is not, and hence require medicine and artificial 

 means to preserve their health. Man, in a savage state, has more in- 

 stinct, but less reason, than when civilised ; and domesticated animals 

 have less instinct, but more of what is called sagacity, than when in a 

 state of nature. Animals are the same now as they were a thousand 

 years ago ; they never desire to discover new kinds of food ; nor do birds 

 build with different materials, or improve in their architecture, or alter 

 in any way, but feed as their parents fed, and build as their parents 

 built, and have the same habits and manners as they had ee in the 

 beginning." But how is it with rational man ? He is always invent- 

 ing and altering, if not improving: his manners differ with every cen- 

 tury, and almost every year ; he is different in many respects now to 

 what he was a hundred years ago ; and the stately palaces of the pre- 

 sent day bear no resemblance to the Indian's wigwam, or the hut of the 

 Hottentot. Thus reason is ever varying, but instinct remains the 

 same ; and for this reason, as well as for many others, it is better adapted 

 to the brute creation, because all have been made for some purpose ; and 

 if they changed their natures as man does, there would be an end to all 

 order, and the laws of nature would be entirely subverted. 



