442 
or his individual taste, or by fifty other influence 3 s the ope ration 
of which argues freedom in the agent to the extent that it 
shows him to be unimpelled by an innate desire ; for an innate 
desire works uniformly; and produces umtorm results Hence 
although we have no internal evidence of the nature ol ^ the 
nest-building instinct, yet we perceive that m its external 
phenomena it presents two features which wc kn ° ' “ f b “ 
racteristic of our own instincts, that is, the production of actions 
prior to experience, and uniformity of operation. , 
p 4. These illustrations will serve to exemplify the metl 
which we may adopt in examining the nature of instin 
rower animate, and by which we are enabled to discover in the 
brute the existence of an automatic principle sufficient to pro- 
duce those actions which are 
his existence It is to this automatic principle that 1 apply t 
instruct- and I include under this term not only he 
desire which impels the bird to the building of his nest or the 
bee to the construction of his cell but all the Passions, fedmgs 
desires or whatever else we may choose to call them,— whether 
they are excited by particular circumstances, or whether they 
originate hi a peculiar bodily condition, whether they are per 
mauent or recur periodically; and the common elements on 
which this generalization rests, are the automatic characteristics 
specified above, and more particularly the tendency to produce 
actions in cases where the benefit and manifest object of such 
actions is beyond the cognizance of the agent. . 
5. The second point which I insisted upon was the automa 
character of memory. Few persons will question this fa^t, 
it must be apparent to everyone who has refiected on the matter 
that he cannot recollect or forget things by the mere hat o 
the rational will, but that facts and persons are recal led ^by ^ 
involuntary operation of the memory, and that the images c 
these Tacts' persons are accompanied on them reproduct on 
by associated ideas and impressions, which again Produce the 
feelings of attraction or repulsion which they excited 
they were originally presented to Ins consciousness. 1 dwell on 
the phenomenon because it is important to my argument as 
accounting automatically for those cases in which the lowei 
animals aft from experience The duckling which nans [to the 
water almost immediately after it has emerged from ti e e^ 
acts! as every one will admit, under the influence of what we 
call blind instinct ; that is to say, it acts from an innate 
and not because it has learned, either from experience or rom 
h priori reasoning on the subject, that the Patens its natural 
element. But the case of the rook which is alarmed by the sight 
