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REVIEW — ILLUSTRATIONS OF INSTINCT. 
obtained, is felt by every kind of creature But there is this 
great difference between mankind and the beast, — that the latter, 
as it is moved by the impression of sense, applies itself to present 
things, and little regards what is past or future. But man, who is 
possessed of reason, through which he discovers what is meet, 
perceives the causes, course, and remote connections of events, 
compares things that resemble each other, and brings together and 
connects the future with the present.” 
“ If this were the sole difference between man and the brute, it 
would at the best be only in degree, and not in kind. In proof of 
the law of human nature by which man is compelled to observe 
and obey instinctive impulses, it will not be necessaryrfor us to 
enter upon a minute survey of the various circumstances of his 
existence, in his passage from youth to age ; for in attempting 
this we should bring ourselves under the necessity of constantly 
endeavouring to separate and define the phenomena which have 
their source in one, from those which must be admitted to spring 
from another and higher origin.” 
“ In preference, then, I will select a period of his life when he 
has not acquired habits of any sort ; when no instruction can have 
been received, when no opportunity has been offered of profiting 
by imitation — a principle so powerful in the education even of 
brutes ; when, in fact, the only stimulus to which he has been sub- 
jected is that of the air, which has first excited the action of breath- 
ing, and has then entered the lungs to produce its specific effects 
on the blood. At this, the earliest stage in the life of an infant, 
the sensation of hunger is the only want, it has ever felt, or has 
been able to display. The manner in which this craving of nature 
is manifested is eminently characteristic of an instinctive faculty; 
and it is the more illustrative in this intance, since it is both ap- 
propriate to its present circumstances, and different from those which 
are equally appropriate to a more advanced stage of its life. No 
precept has instructed the little stranger that the mouth, rather 
than the eye or ear, is the entrance to that channel through which 
nourishment ought to be received ; or that this food is furnished by 
an apparatus of one form rather than another ; and yet, even if a 
finger be brought into contact with its cheek, the mouth is instantly 
directed to the object, and it pursues it in various directions, as the 
impression first made is removed to another spot. And when at 
last the lips are permitted to be closed on the supposed source of 
enjoyment, the action is not that of chewing — which is the instinc- 
tive propensity, under similar circumstances, of the being from 
whom the infant has derived its existence — but of sucking, which 
is the only one that for the present can be made available to the 
object in view.' 
