i88o.] 
Instinct and Mind. 
229 
essential difference between man and the lower animals. 
It appears to me that the true distinction between animal 
instinCtives — great as they are — and mental power is lost 
sight of, or not understood or ignored, by the many narrators 
of pretty instances of animal sagacity, and by those sages 
who insist as a scientific dogma that instinCt and mind are 
common to animals and to man. 
In my work I have treated the subject in a discursive and 
fragmentary manner : the distinctions appeared so marked 
and decisive that I refrained from giving the subject a spe- 
cial chapter ; the incidental observations seemed to me 
conclusive of the subject, and were really interfused for the 
purpose of showing the fallacy of the materialism so broadly 
interpolated in many scientific memoirs. I am impressed 
with astonishment to find some of our greatest biologists 
and so-called metaphysicians insisting on a mentality (if it 
be one) wholly due to sensory impressions as synonymous 
with the reasoning faculty of cultured man. How this 
arises it is difficult to understand, for the reasoning on the 
subject appears to be wanting in those characters of induc- 
tion and deduction so necessary in the discrimination of 
scientific theses, and also in that analytical acumen which 
alone can be determinative of the problem. 
I begin my special observations by an admission so large 
in character that some may consider it as conclusive of the 
question. I concede as animal instinCtives, consciousness, 
association, appreciation, comparison, contrivance, con- 
struCtiveness, will, and memory, and all the inferences 
appertaining to these faculties which have their bases in the 
senses. All of them are powers which are necessary for the 
enjoyment of animal existence, and are displayed in the 
many amusing and instructive anecdotes of animal life. 
When I shall speak of inseCt life the instinctive capacity 
amounts to a prevision , this prevision greatly exceeding the 
instinCtives appertaining to the more highly constituted 
animals, not excluding man. I mean by a prevision the 
power which some inseCts possess of foreseeing conditions 
necessary to the preservation and to the perpetuation of the 
particular species. It cannot be argued that this faculty 
could have arisen from any process of reasoning, it having 
relation to aCts of which the parents could not be cognizant) 
as in the majority of the instances the parents have no 
experience to direct them, they having ceased to exist before 
their progeny has being. It is therefore an innate and 
hereditary instinCt, and has application to the particular 
varieties of inseCt life. 
