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raatic, maij be utilized by the rational will. It is not necessary 
to suppose that these intellectual processes exist in the brute 
to any great extent ; and it is sufficient if we allow that he 
possesses intellectual faculties, or the analogues of intellectual 
faculties, which serve the purpose of his preservation. 
7. The first point was the enlargement of the usual definition 
of instinct; and, if we allow the second and third points, that 
is, the automatic character of memory and the intellectual 
processes,* we are able to explain those actions the benefit of 
which has been learned by experience ; and we thus arrive at 
the existence of an automatic principle, which is sufficient for 
the purpose of preserving animal life. The automatic nature 
of instinct is, of course, most clearly evidenced in the operations 
of blind instinct, which we can only explain by saying that the 
animal has an innate liability to be excited to action by par 
ticular causes, i.e. by certain objects, or the qualities of objects, 
&c., and that these causes produce actions prior to experience 
by means of the desires which they awaken. Coming next to 
the extension of these causes by the operation of memorv, we 
see that the desire must have been aroused by a process analo- 
gous to a reasoning process, but which such instances as that 
of my friend and his schoolmaster enable us to explain with- 
out the hypothesis of a rational principle. 
8. It is obvious, then, that this automatic reason, as we find 
it in the brute, is a regulative machinery which lies outside 
the desires, and by which the impressions derived from the 
external world are modified in his brain before the desires are 
awakened ; and although I have endeavoured to avoid anything 
like teleological argument, yet I am constrained to point out 
the manifest utility of this machinery ; as were it absent the 
area of the animal’s experience would be incapable of extension ; 
and be would be only moved by those objects or appearances 
towards which his inclination or aversion is innate. This 
regulative machinery works as automatically as the desires; it 
consists of the principal intellectual processes — abstraction and 
generalization, f — and of memory. It is, as I consider, sufficient, 
in conjunction with the desires, to explain all the actions of the 
brute without our investing him with rational knowledge or a 
rational will, of which lie shows no trace. As a question of 
terminology, it is immaterial whether we separate the desires 
from the machinery which arranges and modifies the impres- 
* I use the term “ process ” to avoid applying the word “ faculty.” 
f I have purposely omitted comparison, as it is more essentially a rational 
process. 
