OS THE DlSTINCTiVE CHARACTERS OF 



whole or of separate parts of the system, and even the economy of pairing, 

 though often united with feehng, and not unfrequently with inteUigencB as 

 well, occur nevertheless in a multiplicity of instances in which we have 

 either direct proofs of the most cogent reasons for believing, that there is- 

 neither feeling nor intelligence whatever, and that every thing is the result 

 of pure, unintelligent, insentient instinct. 



1 have just observed that the blood is alive : it has all the common proper- 

 ties of life ; irritability, contractihty^ and a power of maintaining its natural 

 scale of heat, whatever be the temperature of the atmosphere by which it 

 is surrounded : and it is perpetually showing its attachment to life by the 

 due and discretionary exercise of these properties with a view of preserving 

 life. It equally resists every excess of coldor of heat thatmay be injurious 

 to it, and hence sometimes raises the thermometer and sometimes de- 

 presses it : it contracts itself, hke the muscular fibre, upon the application 

 of an appropriate stimulus, and convey? the principle of life, and powerfully 

 assists in applying that principle to parts in which the vital action is lan- 

 guid, or has altogether ceased. There is no part of the animal system that 

 evinces in a more eminent degree the faculty of self-preservation, or self- 

 production, of attachment to life, or of resistance to whatever is injurious, 

 than the bloorl ; and yet every one knows that this faculty is pure, unmixt 

 instinct, equaHy destitute of feeling or intelligence : it is, as 1 have already 

 defined instinct to be in every instance, a "simple operation of the prin- 

 ciple of organized life by the exercise of certain natural powers directed 

 to the present or future good of the individual."* 



In the new laid egg we have an equal proof of the same faculty of self- 

 preservation, the same attachment to life, and resistance to destruction. 

 For, like the blood of a healthy adult, the new-laid egg^, the few and simple 

 vessels of which are merely in a nascent and liquescent state, and which 

 can scarcely be regarded otherwise than as a fluid, is capable equally of 

 counteracting heat, cold, and putrefaction, and does forcibly counteract 

 them for a considerable period longer than an egg that has been frozen or 

 in any other way deprived of its vital and instinctive principle. It is this 

 vital and instinctive principle that alone matures the egg, and shapes the 

 matter of which it consists into distinct and specific lineaments, and calls 

 forth the power which it does not yet possess, of sensation and perception, 

 in what way these attributes are produced we know not ; but we see them 

 issuing from the matter of the egg alone, when aided by the additional and 

 cherishing power of simple heat. And provided it be properly regulated 

 and applied, it is of no iniportance from what quarter such heat is derived ; 

 for we have already had occasion to observe, that the warmth of a sand-bath - 

 or of an oven will answer as effectually as that of the mother's sitting over it. 



But let us not rest here : let us proceed to examples of the renewal or 

 propagation of life, from parent stocks ; to examples of the reproduction of 

 the whole, or of separate parts of the system, in cases in which there is as 

 obvious a destitution of sensation or intelligence ; and where, as in the pre- 

 ceding ins|ances, the whole must be the result of pure insentient instinct. 



There is not a single organ in the animal frame but what is perpetually 

 reproducing itself, alternately dying and renewing ; so that the same man of 

 to-day has not an individual particle belonging to him of that which con- 

 stituted his corporeal frame ten, fifteen, or twenty years ago. And yet the 



* Compare here Girtanner's Meraoires surl' Irritabi!ite, consideree camme prlncipede vis 

 ms la Nature org:anlsee.—Journ. de Physiqucj 1790, 



