AND AMERICAN RURAL SPORTS. 
103 
imagery or anticipated view of the intended act, with its 
accompaniments, the darkness, the silence, &c. &c. — and 
that when it really did begin to happen — when the man ac- 
tually entered the room at midnight, the animal seized him 
as described; — or in whatever way we regard it as having 
been effected, the operation of an intellectual power is most 
unequivocal. We cannot account for this cool and dispas- 
sionate magnanimity, which renders the brute animal un- 
mindful of itself, while extending its protection, and this 
with discrimination of circumstances, to man, unless by a 
directing energy, unseen by itself, acting upon its mind, 
and disposing it to use its immediate conscious faculties in 
operating according to a particular dictate; the animal, as to 
all its conscious faculties and bodily powers, being left in 
perfect freedom, although thus overruled by a presiding 
power, of which it is totally unconscious. We cannot 
otherwise account for the apparently complex nature of 
brutes, “ which,” as beautifully observed by Addison, 
“thus rises above reason, and falls infinitely short of it,” 
and which- “ cannot be accounted for by any properties of 
matter, and at the same time works after so odd a manner, 
that one cannot think it the faculty, ( as regards the crea- 
ture, he might have added) of an intellectual being. ” 
According to the view above taken, then, the brute, 
within the sphere of its consciousness, is in perfect free- 
dom; thus it is by no means an automaton, but gifted with 
a subordinate freedom of volition, discrimination and action, 
beneath the moral and intellectual sphere by which it is 
ruled and governed. 
The foregoing, however, it may perhaps be said, is an 
extraordinary instance of the actions of instinct. In reply 
to this, the question may be asked, — are not the most com- 
mon and ordinary instances of instinctive action equally 
illustrative of an intelligence superior to the conscious fa- 
culties of the creature; which intelligence must, therefore, 
operate upon its conscious perception, and constitute, as it 
were, th eprimum mobile , actuating and impelling it to the 
most reasonable and circumstantial course of action that can 
be conceived, for arriving at the fulfilment of the ends for 
which it is brought into existence? Does the spider, in the 
curious act of weaving its web, think within itself, and 
say, ‘ I will extend my threads in this order, and connect 
and tie them together transversely, to secure my web from 
the rude vibrations of the air; and in the terminations which 
constitute the central point of my web, I will provide 
myself a seat, where I may sit and watch what happens, 
and be ready to seize and envelope every fly that is caught 
in my trap? — Or does the bee reason and say to itself, ‘ I 
will take my flight to such a field, where I know there is 
plenty of flowers, and I will gather wax and honey from 
them, and of the wax I will build contiguous cells in a par- 
ticular arrangement and form, and so disposed, that I and 
my companions may have free ingress and egress, and in 
process of time may lay up a large store of honey, sufficient 
for our necessities during the approaching winter, that we 
may not starve; and I will help to support, like a good 
citizen, the political and economical prudence of the com- 
munity?’ 
We cannot surely conceive any such process of reflection 
as this to pervade the consciousness of the creatures, al- 
though their acts evidently include it in some way or other; 
and this I think amounts to a full proof, that reasoning is 
in no case the effect of instinct, as has been supposed by 
some philosophers; for it determines that the voluntary 
powers of animals, may be most forcibly directed to a par- 
ticular course of action, without any reasonable perception, 
either of the act or of its consequences, on the part of the 
animals themselves; and shows that the instinct of animals 
is governed by the influence of an intelligence, (acting in 
this case according to an uniform mode or fixed law,) which 
cannot be ascribed to the animals themselves; and which 
evidently acts upon them above the sphere of their proper 
consciousness. The same arguments are applicable to those 
cases, in which animals appear to act more immediately 
from the exigency of circumstances, that in these also they 
are similarly directed; as in the case of the ostrich, an ap- 
parently stupid bird, which, in Senegal, where the heat is 
great, sits only by night, when the coolness of the air 
would chill the eggs; and in the case of parent birds, when 
their nestlings are confined in cages, or tied to the nest; in 
which exigency, the old ones prolong their care, and con- 
tinue to supply them with food beyond the accustomed pe- 
riod. * - It thus appears clearly evident, I think, that ani- 
mals do not act with a view to consequences, from their 
own proper consciousness; but that whenever they do so 
act, it is from a dictating energy operating above the sphere 
of their consciousness, and disposing them so to do: that 
the business of mental analysis and extraction, is perform- 
ed for them, as it were, in every instance in which they 
appear to exhibit proofs of it; and that properly speaking, 
there is nothing of design attributable to brutes in their ac- 
tions, but merely a subordinate voluntary principle, and 
discriminative perception, which may be termed natural, to 
distinguish it from what is moral, intellectual, and scienti- 
* A few years since a pair of sparrows which had built in the thatch roof of a 
house at Poole, were observed to continue their regular visits to the nest long 
after the time when the young birds take flight. This unusual circumstance con- 
tinued throughout the year; and in the winter, a gentleman who had all along 
observed them, determined on investigating its cause. He therefore mounted a 
ladder, and found one of the young ones detained a prisoner, by means of a piece 
of string or worsted, which formed part of the nest, having become accidentally 
twisted round its leg. Being thus incapacitated for procuring its own subsist- 
ence, it had been fed by the continued exertions of its parents. B. 
