ON INSTINCT. 



231 



comes an inhabitant of the air, and instantly*pursues the very same tiain 

 of actions to provide for a new progeny which had been pursued by the 

 parent insect of the year before. 



In all such cases it is clear that there is a principle implanted in the 

 living form equally distinct fi'om all mechanical, chemical, and rational 

 powers, which directs the agent by an unerring impulse, or in other 

 words, impels it by a prescribed and unerring law, to accomphsh a defi- 

 nite end by a definite mean. 



Such instinctive powers are not only allowed upon Mr. Smellie's hy- 

 pothesis, but are conceived to be almost innumerable ; and reason, instead 

 of giving birth to them, is in his opinion, as 1 have already ©"bserved, the 

 general result of them, and consists iri the power of comparing one in- 

 stinct with another, and assenting to those that preponderate. Accord- 

 ing to this hypothesis, all the actions of the involuntary organs of the 

 body are so many instincts, as pulsation, digestion, secretion ; all natural 

 feelings are so many instincts, as love of hfe, dread of death, and the de- 

 sire of progeny ; all the passions are so many instincts, as fear, hope, 

 envy, benevolence, reverence, superstition, devotion ; and hence life is 

 nothing more than a bundle of instincts and reason, which is itself 

 founded upon an instinctive principle, consists, as I have just observed, 

 of nothing more than a pov/er or tendency to compare the different 

 strengths of these antagonist forces whenever they are brought into a 

 state of action, and to be guided by those that are prepollent : or that 

 offer what is felt or conceived to be the best means of obtaining a pro- 

 posed end.' The objections to which this hypothesis is exposed, or 

 rather the evils chargeable upon it, are innumerable^ ; but it is sufficient 

 to observe, at present, that it as effectually confounds the separate facul- 

 ties of instinct and reason as the preceding hypothesis of Dr. Darv/in, 

 and consequently that neither of the two opinions are in any respect 

 more admissible than those which refer the instinctive faculty to a me- 

 chanical principle, or, in other words, to the common properties of unor- 

 ganized matter. 



III. There is a third class of philosophers who, sensible of the diffi- 

 culty of the case, have endeavoured to get over it by contending that 

 instincts are of a mixed kind ; that they either originate in a power which 

 holds an iqtermediate nature between matter and mind ; or else are in 

 some instances simply material, and in others simply mental. 



The very excellent and learned Cudworth belonged to the first of 

 these two divisions, and may be regarded as having taken the lead in the 

 scheme which it developes. I have already observed, in a former study, 

 that this profound metaphysician was so strongly attached to the Plato 

 nic theory of the creation of the world, that he strove, with the full force 

 of his mighty mind, to restore this theory to general vogue. And as it 

 was one important principle in this theory that incorporeal form, or an 

 active and plastic nature, exists throughout the world independently of 

 pure mind and pure matter, and that the last is solely rendered visible 

 and endowed with manifest properties by an unioa with this active in- 

 termede, Cudworth conceived that all instinctive powers might be satis- 

 factorily resolved into the operation of the same secondary energy in 

 proportion as it pervades the universe.! In opposition to which doctrine^ 



* Transact, of the Royal Society of Edinb. vol. v, p. 39» 

 t Intellect, Spt. 1743. • 



If 



