503 
REASON AND INSTINCT. 
By Veterinarius. 
To the Editor of “ The Veterinarian .” 
Dear Sir, — May I be allowed the liberty of a few observations 
on the “ Illustrations of Instinct” which appeared in your last I — 
and remain 
Your much obliged servant, 
Veterinarius. 
“ A man builds a house from reason — a bird builds a nest from 
instinct ; and no one would say that the bird, in this, acted from 
reason.” In the first, man does not always build a house from 
reason, as is plainly exemplified in those which remain unfinished 
from want of money ; and I cannot see why a man is not as in- 
stinctively to build a house as a bird a nest : at all events, Dr. 
Whately does not prove the matter. Again ; every man builds a 
house or seeks a shelter of some kind, be it wet or dry. Every 
bird does not. A bird does not build a nest for itself alone, but 
when it has mated and intends to bring up young, and this before 
it has any experience of the “ mated life.” Birds are allowed to 
propagate their species from instinct ; and why build their nests, 
which is a part of the process, from the same cause 1 It mates from 
instinct, and it builds the nest from instinct, without any reasoning 
as to why it should be so. Man does not “ do the same things from 
the same impulses.” He certainly does some things with the brutes 
from the same impulse ; but that impulse is instinct, not reason. 
Man connects the chain of cause and effect (reasoning), and the 
brute does not. The latter has to “ learn to do things,” and the 
former does many without either teaching or learning. Docility is 
not “ evidently characteristic of reason,” for reason is the frequent 
cause of great contention. What share has habit and experience 
in the education of the elephant, horse, or dog I and what in the 
tuition of the child’s reading or writing 1 Docility in those ani- 
mals is more characteristic of superior power than of reason or in- 
stinct either. The great proportion of that superior power is man’s 
reason. 
“ They (the brutes) have been found able to combine, more or 
less, the means of accomplishing a certain end, from having learned 
by experience that such and such means so applied would con- 
duce to it.” Very true; but the brutes have to “ learn by experi- 
ence,” while man arrives at the same, and has correct conclusions, 
without any, and by the aid of reason alone. 
