232 



ON INSTINCT. 



however, it is sufficient to remark that, as the existence of all visible mat- 

 ter, whether organized or unorganized, upon the leading principle of the 

 Platonic theory, is equally the result of this plastic power, and produced 

 by an union with it, it should follow that unorganized matter ought oc- 

 casionally at least to give proofs of an instinctive faculty, as well as mat- 

 ter in an organized state ; proofs of definite means to accomphsh a defi- 

 nite end, and that end the general weal, preservation, or reproduction of 

 the body exhibiting it. But as, by the common consent of all mankind, 

 no such faculty is ever to be traced in unorganized matter, it cannot be 

 referred to a principle which is equally common and essential to all visi- 

 ble matter, whether under an organized or an unorganized modification. 



At the head of the second division of the last class of philosophers to 

 whom 1 have referred, we may perhaps place M. Buffon ; who, incapa- 

 ble of acceding altogether to the mechanical hypothesis of Des Cartes, 

 yet not choosing to allot to animals below the rank of man the possession 

 of an intelHgent principle, kindly endowed them with the property of 

 life, which Des Cartes had morosely withheld, by contending that they 

 were mechanical machines alone, and very obligingly allowed them to 

 possess a faculty of distinguishing between pleasure and pain, together 

 with a general desire for the former and a general aversion for the latter. 

 And having thus equipped the different tribes of brutes, he conceived 

 that he had sufficiently accounted for the existence of instinctive actions, 

 by leaving them to the operation of this distinguishing faculty upon the 

 mechanical properties of their respective organs. M. Reimar, however, 

 an ingenious German professor, who flourished towards the close of the 

 last century, did not conceive in the same manner : and hence, in a 

 work immediately directed to the instinct of animals, and published at 

 Hamburg in 1769, he divides the actions which he apprehends ought to 

 pass under this name into three classes, mechanical, representative, and 

 spontaneous : by the first intending all the proper actions of animal or- 

 gans over which the will has no control, as the pulsation of the heart, 

 the secretion of the various fluids, and the dilatation of the pupil : by the 

 second, those which depend upon an imperfect kind of memory, and 

 which so far as it is memory, brutes enjoy in common with mankind ; | 

 and by the third, those which originate from M. BuflTon's admitted faculty | 

 of distinguishing pleasure from pain, and the desire consequent upon it | 

 of possessing the one and avoiding the other. ' 't 



It is, however, a sufficient answer to both these opinions, which in | 

 truth are founded upon one common basis, that, like the theories of Dar- 

 win and Smellie, tliey equally confound, though in a different manner, 

 powers that are essentially distinct. The founders of these opinions -a 

 may, with Darwin and SmeUie, derive the instinctive faculty from a prin- j 

 ciple of mind, or with Des Cartes and Dr. Reid from a principle of body : | 

 but they have no right to derive it from both, or to contend that its differ- | 

 ent ramifications originate in some instances from the one source, and | 

 in others from the other : though, as I have already observed, if they do 

 derive it from mind alone, they will be compelled to admit its existence 

 in a thousand cases in which not a single attribute of mind can be traced ; 

 while, if they derive it from body alone, they offer a cause that is inade- 

 quate to the effect produced. 



M. Cuvier has taken a ground still different from any of these philoso- 

 phers. He has not, indeed, expressly written upon the subject, but in a 



