is antagonistic to reasoning; for whenever we seriously set to 
work to form an impartial judgment on any matter, we care- 
fully exclude from our minds such images as are likely to 
influence our desires and consequently to impair the correctness 
of our judgment ; in other words, we shut out the automatic 
principle in order that the rational principle may work freely. 
And I think it might be shown that whenever desire helps to 
impel a man towards an action, the benefit of which he has 
demonstrated to himself by reflection, it is because an image 
has presented itself which would have excited a desire towards 
that action even if there had been no reflection at all. Yet, 
that a man may act from rational motives and without desire 
having any part in the production of the action, is a fact of 
which every one’s self-consciousness will supply him with ample 
proof; for, if we examine ourselves when under the influence 
of an inclination produced by a rational conviction of the 
utility, &c., of any given action, we shall perceive that in many 
cases the inclination does not at all partake of the nature of a 
desire, and that whenever it does, the reason is, as I have just 
said, that a certain image has been evoked which would have 
excited the desire independently of the rational conviction. 
16. But the Fatalist will maintain that there is a common 
element running through all human actions, to wit, that they 
all conduce to the benefit — I use this term in its widest sense — 
of the agent, whether he (the agent) is rationally aware of the 
benefit or not; and he will explain even benevolent actions on 
his theory of the gratification of a benevolent instinct. I may 
concede this point for the sake of avoiding irrelevant argument, 
and content myself with pointing out that there is a vital 
distinction between the principle which produces actions prior 
to experience, and the principle which produces actious in 
consequence of the knowledge possessed bv the agent. The 
different senses in which the term “ knowledge ” is frequently 
employed in no way obliterate this distinction. In common 
discourse we hear the word applied to instinct in such expres- 
sions as “the horse knows what is good for it” — speaking of 
its food ; but the horse canuot be said to know what is good 
for it in the same sense that the physiologist does. Its know- 
ledge, even when it is experimental, consists in nothing more 
than a liability to be attracted or repelled by food which has 
on some former occasion proved agreeable or disagreeable to its 
palate. Its instinct guides it in the selection of the food which 
is best adapted for its sustenance, a fact of which the horse 
itself is profoundly ignorant. The lion feeds on the deer in 
obedience to an instinctive inclination to kill animals and eat 
