0]S INSTINCT. 



the great benefit resulting from literature, and meritai cultivation, the age 

 is, indeed, thoroughly awake : and it is consolatory to turn from the sicken- 

 ing scenes of the continent, and fix the eye in this point of view upon ouy 

 own native spot ; to behold the ingenuous minds of multitudes labouring 

 with the desire of useful knowledge ; to contemplate the numerous temples 

 that are rising all around us, devoted to taste, to genius, to learning, to the 

 liberal arts ; and to mark the generous confederacies by which they are 

 supported and embellished. 



In this little school of philosophy, surrounded by walls that were once 

 enriched with the choicest collections, and the rarest curiosities of nature,* 

 but which, from a concurrence of adverse circumstances, must have fallen 

 into ruins, had not you, with laudable patronage, interposed, re-decorated 

 the sinking edifice, and made it once more echo to the voice of instruction 

 and study ; — here, where the genius of Science has resumed the possession 

 of his simple thron^j|^nd is once more thronged by a numerous train of 

 attentive votaries — nUe more especially may I address these observations 

 without incurring the charge of rhapsody or extravagance. — Long may so 

 promising an Institution flourish ! soundly may it be cultivated ! and of 

 sterling value be the harvest that it produces \ 



LECTURE IV, 



ON INSTINCT. 



There are various actions, and trains of actions, occasionally to be mei 

 with among mankind, but more frequently and more strikingly among 

 other animals, which indicate the employment of definite means to obtain 

 a definite end, without the intervention of that chain of thought which 

 characterizes reason^ and which have hence been ascribed to a distinct 

 principle, that has been distinguished by the name of instinct. 



Such, in the new-born infant, and indeed in the young of all mammalian 

 animals, is the act of hunting out for the mother *s milky food, and of suck- 

 ing with a perfection which can never be acquired in subsequent life. 

 Such is the whole process of nesthng or nidification among birds ; the peri- 

 odical change of salt for fresh water among the sturgeon, salmon, and other 

 fishes ; and, among insects, the formation of the exquisite decoy-lines of 

 the spider, and the nice masonry of the bee, and of the termes hellicosm 

 or white ant. 



The common fact admits of no dispute ; the modes of accounting for it 

 have been various, and in the utmost degree unsatisfactory. In a general 

 survey they may be resolved into three classes : first, those hypotheses 

 which ascribe the whole to the operation of body alone ; secondly, those 

 which ascribe it to mind alone ; and, thirdly, those which derive it from a 

 substance of a mediate nature between the two, or attribute it partly to the 

 one and partly to the other. 



In pursuing this highly interesting subject, I shall first briefly notice the 

 principal opinions which have been oflfered upon it, in the order thus laid 



♦ Formerly celebrated as the X^ererian Maseum, and erected for that purpese. 



