Gilbert White Reconsidered. 
635 
1880.] 
gallinaceous and natatorial birds and of ruminant mammals, 
as if common to the whole animal kingdom, save man only. 
Nor do we find him quite so often and so prominently as 
some of his contemporaries, posing in an attitude of wonder 
over the results of “ instinct.” He even notices the mis- 
takes which birds may commit under the influence of this 
supposed faculty. By recording these imperfections and 
errors he strikes, in fadt, a deadly blow at the existence of 
instinCt as commonly defined and explained by the “ philo- 
sophers,” a definition to which he also elsewhere commits 
himself. In so doing he reminds us of Priestley, who, after 
he had discovered oxygen, remained an upholder of the 
Phlogistian system. He admits that “ there are instances 
in which instinCt does vary, and conform to the circum- 
stances of place and convenience,” and thus renders its 
diagnosis, as a faculty distinct from reason, impossible. 
Yet elsewhere he remarks, in self-contradiCtion, “ 1 hus is 
instinCt, taken the least out of its way, an undistinguishing 
limited* faculty.” He gives one instance of a pair of birds 
devising an unusual expedient to meet a special and excep- 
tional case in the nurture of their brood. Yet, considering 
how long and how carefully he observed the habits of ani- 
mals, it is strange that he does not recount more cases of 
animal sagacity, or its opposite. Incidents narrated by him 
would have been valuable data, as we might have felt assured 
of his accuracy. In his day, however, the custom of refer- 
ring all animal aCtion to instindt was so universal that even 
the observant naturalists rarely troubled themselves to en- 
quire further. 
White must be pronounced less prone to teleology than 
most of his contemporaries — a highly creditable peculiarity 
if we remember the temper of the age in which he lived 
and wrote. In his sixth letter to Robert Marsham, . of 
Rippon Hall, near Norwich, first published in the edition 
before us, he declares, indeed, that “ physico-theology is a 
noble study, worthy the attention of the wisest man. We 
find also occasional quotations from, or rather references to, 
Derham. But those rhetorical outbursts on the harmonies 
and contrivances of the organic world which have played so 
decidedly into the hands of materialists, and injured the 
cause they were intended to serve, are here mainly conspi- 
cuous by their absence. 
White was essentially a writer of the modern or real type, 
in contradistinction to the mediaeval or verbal. These terms 
* Is not reason a “ limited ” faculty, in many cases also “ undistinguishing ” ? 
