i88o.] 
Instinct and Mind. 
231 
nutrition and to perpetuation. To go beyond the prota- 
moeba to the blood corpuscules, unless they are considered to 
be amoebas, we have a collective community possessing no 
independent life. Dumas, when experimenting on the blood 
corpuscules after the method of Berzelius and Muller, found 
they were subject to decomposition, but which he obviated 
in filtration by passing a current of air through the liquid, 
thus renewing the condition in which they exist in arterial 
blood. This would seem to show that they have respiration, 
and it has been shown they are propagated by fission. If 
they change their forms, and breathe, they have animation, 
but to them cannot be conceded those conditions named 
instindts. From the blood corpuscules, supposing an inde- 
pendent animation up to and including man, we have 
graduated instinctive aptitudes exactly apportioned to the 
place in Nature which each animated variation holds. If 
we are to argue that the manifestation of particular instinCts 
in particular animals shows mind, it may be claimed for 
plants, — e.g ., the Valisneria spiralis. The female flowers 
float on the surface of the water ; the male plant is chained 
to the bottom : when the period for fecundation arises, the 
peduncles of the male flowers break, mount to the surface, 
and float around the female flowers, whereby fecundation is 
effected. The Utricularia has even a more interesting pro- 
cess. These plant faCts are quite as extraordinary as any 
instances of mental aptitudes recorded of animals. The 
plants manifest desire, purpose, and will, and the instances 
go to prove that creation or animation — which you will — is 
an extended chain with innumerable links. Regarding man 
in his animal nature, there appears to be no distinction be- 
tween him and the higher order of animals in the gratifica- 
tion of the instinCts of his nature, excepting so far as the 
sensory selfism is directed by a higher order of instinctive 
adaptability. 
When we define mind we define a higher power than in- 
stinctive aptitudes ; call it intelligence, we will not pause 
for a word : it is that power which enables man to conceive 
ideas, and to reason on subjects which in no wise are included 
in the category of the senses, or have their bases in them — 
abstract ideas, the true use of which is to subject the animal 
selfishness, the outbirth of the sensory instinCts, to the 
power of these abstractions, whereby an equitable relation 
is instituted between man and man and between him and 
the lower creations, his being is elevated, and his brute 
instinCts subjected to reason. It does not follow because 
man rarely reduces these equities into practice fh^t therefore 
yoL 11. (third series), s 
