36 
REVIEWS. 
inorganic in the same degree, but rather to be compared with the plant, 
which is organic without sensation. 
Ascending in the animal scale, there are developed in succession, con¬ 
structiveness, instinct, intelligence. The third chapter, the longest of the 
book, is devoted to the first of these. Beimarus is largely quoted for the 
^lustration of this faculty. But after all the pains which Hinrich has taken 
to distinguish it from instinct, his own representations seem to result in a 
distinction only of degree and direction. Both are called out by the relation 
to external nature. When this, from being the means, becomes the medium 
of organic life, constructiveness (Kunst-trieb) is developed. So long as the 
dependence of the organism upon the medium is immediate, constructive¬ 
ness prevails. The dependence diminished, instinct succeeds. In construc¬ 
tiveness the activity is less that of the animal than of the medium. The 
bee forms its cell according to the same law by which a fluid crystallizes in 
the rock ; but the animal has not perception of the law. If it were the 
product of the animal only, it should be organic; but as the product 
of nature through the animal, it is inorganic in symmetrical form and figure. 
The same vital principle, which is the source of the plastic faculty, is 
that also of constructiveness in bringing the animal into relation with its 
medium, and of instinct in making it more independent of the medium. 
Instinct is the negative of constructiveness, but not in the sense of defect. 
The negative is higher than the negatived : this is logically true, true also 
experimentally. The lowest classes of animals have not constructiveness ; 
it is eminently developed in insects and birds, and finally disappears in the 
highest classes, in which instinct is most conspicuous. But as constructive¬ 
ness passes into instinct, some have both, as migratory birds. Hinrich re¬ 
gards instinct chiefly as developed in the societies of animals, in their migra¬ 
tion and domestication. What draws animals from one climate to another is 
out of them, but at the same time in them. The stork does not seek the South, 
the South draws the stork. The more that instinct takes the place of con¬ 
structiveness, the more independent of external nature the animal becomes, 
the nearer to man—the more his intelligence becomes the power that gives 
its determined direction to the instinct of the animal. It is this which 
leads to the illusion of supposing animals to have reason like man. Does 
an animal appear wise, docile—it is so through the human intelligence. 
Parrots do not learn to speak, but to repeat the words they are taught, as 
sensations (sounds), not as terms (significant). Words are signs, but of 
ideas, not of sensations, as sounds, tones. The tongue is necessary for 
speech, but as the means, not as the organ of it. The tongue is the organ 
of taste; the organ of speech is the Inner of the man, the spirit. 
