The effects likely to be produced on the mind by this passion for universal knowledge, are well described by Seneca. "Plus scire velle quam sit satis intemperantiæ genus est. Quid, quod ista liberalium artium consectatio, molestos, verbosos, intempestivos, sibi placentes facit, et ideo non discentes necessaria, quia supervacua didicerunt.”1 The following remarks of Diderot, on the same subject, are not unworthy of attention:-" Une grand mémoire suppose une grande facilité d'avoir à la fois ou rapidement plusieurs idées différentes; et cette facilité nuit à la comparaison tranquille d'un petit nombre d'idées que l'esprit doit, pour ainsi dire, envisager fixément. Pour moi, je pense que c'est par cette raison, que le jugement et la grande mémoire vont si rarement ensemble. Une tête meublée d'un grand nombre de choses disparates, est assez semblable à une bibliothèque de volumes dépareillés. C'est une de ces compilations Germaniques, hérissées sans raison et sans goût, d'Hébreu, d'Arabique, de Grec, et de Latin, qui sont déjà fort grosses, qui grossissent encore, qui grossiront toujours, et qui n'en seront que plus mauvaises. C'est un de ces magazins remplis d'analyses et de jugemens d'ouvrages que l'analyste n'a point entendus; magazins de marchandises mêlées, dont il n'y a proprement que le bordereau qui lui appartienne: c'est un commentaire où l'on rencontre souvent ce qu'on ne cherche point; rarement ce qu'on cherche; et presque toujours les choses dont on a besoin, égarées dans la foule d'inutilités."-Lettre sur les Sourds et Muets. 1 Epist. 88. Lagrange, in his translation of this passage, has preserved all the force and conciseness of the original. "Il y a une sorte d'intempérance à vouloir savoir plus que le besoin exige. Ajoutez que les vaines recherches rendent les savants insupportables, bavards, importuns, suffisants, et peu occupés d'apprendre le nécessaire quand ils sont pourvus du superflu.” CHAPTER II. COMPARISON BETWEEN THE FACULTIES OF MAN AND THOSE OF THE LOWER ANIMALS. "Les actions des bêtes sont peut-être un des plus profonds abimes sur quoi notre raison se puisse exercer; et je suis surpris que si peu de gens s'en apperçoivent." Bayle, Dict. Art. Barbe. Note C.1 SECTION I. THAT the brutes are under the more immediate guidance of Nature, while man is left, in a great degree, to regulate his own destiny by the exercise of his reason, is a fact too obvious. to stand in need of illustration. In what manner, indeed, Nature operates in this instance, we are wholly ignorant; but nothing can be more certain than this, that it is not by a deliberate choice, analogous to what we experience in ourselves, that the lower animals are determined to the pursuit of particular ends, nor by any process analogous to our reason that they combine means in order to attain them. To that unknown, but obviously intelligent cause which guides the operations of the brutes, we give the name of Instinct, without presuming to decide the question where this 1 After prefixing to the following chapter the above motto from Bayle, which expresses my own deliberate and decided opinion, it will not be supposed by my readers that I flatter myself with the hope of being able to communicate any new and important lights on the subject to which it relates. If I shall be able to correct some of the rash and extravagant conclusions still current among contemporary writers, and to exemplify what I conceive to be a more sober and rational mode of philosophizing, it is all that I aspire to. intelligence resides; much in the same manner in which we give the name of the letters x and y to the unknown quantities in an algebraical problem. The circumstances by which it is distinguished from Reason are so remarkable, and so manifest to the most careless observer, as to preclude, among candid inquirers, the possibility of dispute. Of these circumstances the two following seem to be the most important:-1st, The uniformity with which it proceeds in all individuals of the same species; and, 2d, The unerring certainty with which it performs its office prior to all experience. In both these respects the operations of reason or of art, properly so called, scem to be essentially different from anything else that is known among animated natures; inasmuch as no two individuals of our species were ever observed to employ exactly the same combinations of means (at least where the means were at all complicated) for the attainment of the same ends, and as the capacity of reason, destitute of the aid of experience, is altogether a barren and unavailing principle. Agreeably to this last observation, art is defined by Lord Bacon very justly, though somewhat diffusely, to be "a proper disposal of the things of nature by human thought and experience, so as to make them answer the designs and uses of mankind." It may be defined more concisely to be the adjustment of means to accomplish a desired end. According to this idea of art, it is necessarily the result of reason and invention; and it also necessarily presupposes experience and observation,— without which it is impossible for the greatest ingenuity to form one single conclusion concerning the order of the universe, or the means to be employed for producing any conceivable effect, whether physical or moral. In endeavouring thus to draw a line of distinction between the operations of Reason and those of Instinct, I would not be understood to refer all the actions of Man to the one principle, and all those of the Brutes to the other. On the contrary, it will afterwards appear that the instincts of the brutes are susceptible of important modifications from the influence of external circumstances, and the accidental experience of the individual animal. And, on the other hand, nothing can be more manifest, than that in our species there are many natural propensities which seem to be perfectly analogous to instinct, in their laws and in their origin. Thus an infant, the moment it is brought into the world, performs, with the most perfect success, the function of respiration; a function which requires the alternate contraction and relaxation of certain muscles in a regular order and succession. The infant has certainly no idea that breathing is necessary to life, nor any knowledge of the means by which that end is accomplished. It is in a similar way that a new born child performs the operations of suction and swallowing. Anatomists describe about thirty pairs of muscles that must be employed in every draught.1 Who puts these muscles into action, and regulates the order in which they are exerted? We may venture to say with confidence, that in so far as this operation indicates design and reason, they are not the design and reason of the infant. If these facts are attentively considered, we may be more easily disposed to admit that instinctive proneness to the interpretation of natural signs, and that instinctive facility in comprehending their meaning, which I formerly ventured to ascribe to our species. Some modern philosophers have attempted to resolve the whole of this process into experience and observation; and to maintain that we learn to interpret natural signs exactly in the same manner in which we learn the meaning of conventional speech. To this doctrine I am not disposed in the least to object, so far as it rests on facts. On the contrary, it appears to me reasonable and philosophical to push it as far as these authorize us to go; for numberless examples show that Nature has done no more for man than was necessary for his preservation, leaving him to make many acquisitions for himself, which she has imparted immediately to the brutes.2 Reid's Essays on the Active Powers of Man, p. 103, 4to edition. A remarkable and indisputable in stance of this occurs in that instinctive perception of distance from the eye, which in many tribes of the brutes is connate with their birth, compared with My own idea is, as I have said on a different occasion, that both instinct and experience are here concerned, and that the share which belongs to each in producing the result can be ascertained by an appeal to facts alone. To object to this con what is known to take place in our own species. The very ingenious and acute Dr. Campbell, indeed, was led by analogy to think it probable, that their perceptions in this case were similar to our own. "There is some ground to think," he observes, "from the exact analogy which the organs of brutes bear to ours, that the discovery of distance from the eye is attained by them in the same manner as by us. As to this, however, I will not be positive." Philosophy of Rhetoric, vol. i. 135. In the Essay upon the External Senses, published in the posthumous Essays of Mr. Adam Smith, it is shown, in a most satisfactory manner, how completely the argument from analogy fails in this instance. p. That, antecedent to all experience, the young of at least the greater part of animals possess some instinctive perception of this kind, seems abundantly evident. The hen never feeds her young by dropping the food into their bills, as the linnet and the thrush feed theirs. Almost as soon as her chickens are hatched, she does not feed them, but carries them to the field to feed, where they walk about at their ease, it would seem, and appear to have the most distinct perception of all the tangible objects which surround them. We may often see them, accordingly, by the straightest road, run to and pick up any little grains which she shows them, even at the distance of several yards; and they no sooner come into the light than they seem to understand the language of vision as well as they ever do afterwards. The young of the partridge and of the grouse seem to have, at the same early period, the most dis tinct perceptions of the same kind. The young partridge, almost as soon as it comes from the shell, runs about among long grass and corn; the young grouse among long heath, and would both most essentially hurt themselves if they had not the most acute, as well as distinct perception of the tangible objects which not only surround them, but press upon them on all sides. This is the case, too, with the young of the goose, of the duck, and, as far as I have been able to observe, with those of at least the greater part of the birds which make their nests upon the ground; with the greater part of those which are ranked by Linnæus in the orders of the hen and the goose, and of many of those long shanked and wading birds which he places in the order that he distinguishes by the name of Gralla." . . . The young of several sorts of quadrupeds seem, like those of the greater part of birds which make their nests upon the ground, to enjoy, as soon as they come into the world, the faculty of seeing as completely as they ever do afterwards. The day, or the day after they are dropt, the calf follows the cow, and the foal the mare, to the field; and though from timidity they seldom remove far from the mother, yet they seem to walk about at their ease; which they could not do unless they could distinguish, with some degree of precision, the shape and proportion of the tangible objects which each visible one represents." Smith's Posthumous Essays, pp. 233-235. With these remarks of Mr. Smith's, the ingenious observations upon instinct, in a late publication of M. Fred. Cuvier, coincide exactly.-See Note E. |