the actions and tendencies of animals successively presented to the observation of the comparative physiologist in the ascending scale of organic life-or rather, I should have said, in an attempt to determine that precise import of the term, which is required by the facts*-the Professor explained the nature of what I have elsewhere called the adaptive power, that is, the faculty of adapting means to proximate ends. [N. B. I mean here a relative end--that which relatively to one thing is an end, though relatively to some other it is in itself a mean. It is to be regretted that we have no single word to express those ends, that are not the end: for the distinction between those and an end in the proper sense of the term is an important one.] The Professor, I say, not only explained, first, the nature of the adaptive power in genere, and, secondly, the distinct character of the same power as it exists specifically and exclusively in the human being, and acquires the name of under

* The word, instinct, brings together a number of facts into one class by the assertion of a common ground, the nature of which ground it determines negatively only-that is, the word does not explain what this common ground is; but simply indicates that there is such a ground, and that it is different in kind from that in which the responsible and consciously voluntary actions of men originate. Thus, in its true and primary import, instinct stands in antithesis to reason; and the perplexity and contradictory statements into which so many meritorious naturalists, and popular writers on natural history (Priscilla Wakefield, Kirby, Spence, Hüber, and even Reimarus) have fallen on this subject, arise wholly from their taking the word in opposition to understanding. I notice this, because I would not lose any opportunity of impressing on the mind of my youthful readers the important truth that language (as the embodied and articulated spirit of the race, as the growth and emanation of a people, and not the work of any individual wit or will) is often inadequate, sometimes deficient, but never false or delusive. We have only to master the true origin and original import of any native and abiding word, to find in it, if not the solution of the facts expressed by it, yet a finger-mark pointing to the road on which this solution is to be sought.

standing; but he did it in a way which gave the whole sum and substance of my convictions, of all I had so long wished, and so often, but with such imperfect success, attempted to convey, free from all semblance of paradoxy, and from all occasion of offence omnem offendiculi* ansam præcidens. It is, indeed for the fragmentary reader only that I have any scruple. In those who have had the patience to accompany me so far on the up-hill road to manly principles, I can have no reason to guard against that disposition to hasty offence from anticipation of consequences-that faithless and loveless spirit of fear which plunged Galileo into a prison+-a spirit most unworthy of an educated man, who ought to have learnt that the mistakes of scientific men have never injured Christianity, while every new truth discovered by them has either added to its evidence, or prepared the mind for its reception.

Neque quicquam addubito, quin ea candidis omnibus faciat satis. Quid autem facias istis qui vel ob ingenii pertinaciam sibi satisfieri nolint, vel stupidiores sint quam ut satisfactionem intelligant? Nam quemadmodum Simonides dixit, Thessalos hebetiores esse quam ut possint a se decipi, ita quosdam videas stupidiores quam ut placari queant. Adhuc non mirum est invenire quod calumnietur qui nihil aliud quarit nisi quod calumnietur, (Erasmi Epist. ad Dorpium.) At all events, the paragraph passing through the medium of my own prepossessions, if any fault be found with it, the fault probably, and the blame certainly, belongs to the reporter.

+ And which (I may add) in a more enlightened age, and in a Protestant country, impelled more than one German University to anathematize Fr. Hoffman's discovery of carbonic acid gas, and of its effects on animal life, as hostile to religion and tending to atheism! Three or four students at the University of Jena, in the attempt to raise a spirit for the discovery of a supposed hidden treasure, were strangled or poisoned by the fumes of the charcoal they had been burning in a close garden-house of a vineyard near Jena, while employed in their magic fumigations and charms. One only was restored to life: and from his account of the noises and spectres (in his ears and eyes) as he was losing his senses, it was taken for granted that

ON INSTINCT IN CONNEXION WITH THE UNDERSTANDING.

It is evident, that the definition of a genus or class is an adequate definition only of the lowest species of that genus: for each higher species is distinguished from the lower by some additional character, while the general definition includes only the characters common to all the species. Consequently it describes the lowest only. Now I distinguish a genus or kind of powers under the name of adaptive power, and give as its generic definition-the power of selecting and adapting means to proximate ends; and as an instance of the lowest species of this genus, I take the stomach of a caterpillar. I ask myself, under what words I can generalise the action of this organ; and I see, that it selects and adapts the appropriate means (that is, the assimilable part of the vegetable congesta) to the proximate end, that is, the growth or reproduction of the insect's body. This we call Vital Power, or vita propria of the stomach; and this being the lowest species, its definition is the same with the definition of the kind.

Well! from the power of the stomach, I pass to the power exerted by the whole animal. I trace it wandering from spot to spot, and plant to plant, till

the bad spirit had destroyed them. Frederic Hoffman admitted that it was a very bad spirit that had tempted them, the spirit of avarice and folly; and that a very noxious spirit (gas, or Geist) was the immediate cause of their death. But he contended that this latter spirit was the spirit of charcoal, which would have produced the same effect, had the young men been chaunting psalms instead of incantations: and acquitted the Devil of all direct concern in the business. The theological faculty took the alarm: even physicians pretended to be horror-stricken at Hoffman's audacity. The controversy and its appendages embittered several years of this great and good man's life.

it finds the appropriate vegetable; and again on this chosen vegetable, I mark it seeking out and fixing on the part of the plant, bark, leaf, or petal, suited to its nourishment: or (should the animal have assumed the butterfly form), to the deposition of its eggs, and the sustentation of the future larva. Here I see a power of selecting and adapting means to proximate ends according to circumstances: and this higher species of adaptive power we call Instinct.

Lastly, I reflect on the facts narrated and described in the preceding extracts from Hüber, and see a power of selecting and adapting the proper means to the proximate ends, according to varying circumstances. And what shall we call this yet higher species? We name the former, instinct: we must call this Instinctive Intelligence.

Here then we have three powers of the same kind; life, instinct, and instinctive intelligence: the essential characters that define the genus existing equally in all three. But in addition to these, I find one other character common to the highest and lowest : namely, that the purposes are all manifestly predetermined by the peculiar organization of the animals; and though it may not be possible to discover any such immediate dependency in all the actions, yet the actions being determined by the purposes, the result is equivalent and both the actions and the purposes are all in a necessitated reference to the preservation and continuance of the particular animal or the progeny. There is selection, but not choice; volition rather than will. The possible knowledge of a thing, or the desire to have that thing representable by a distinct correspondent thought, does not, in the animal, suffice to render the thing an object, or the ground of a purpose. I select and adapt the proper means to the separation of a stone from a rock, which I neither can, nor desire to use for food, shelter, or ornament because, perhaps, I wish to measure

the angles of its primary crystals, or, perhaps, for no better reason than the apparent difficulty of loosening the stone-sit pro ratione voluntas-and thus make a motive out of the absence of all motive, and a reason out of the arbitrary will to act without any

reason.

Now what is the conclusion from these premisses? Evidently this: that if I suppose the adaptive power in its highest species, or form of instinctive intelligence, to co-exist with reason, free will, and selfconsciousness, it instantly becomes Understanding: in other words, that understanding differs indeed from the noblest form of instinct, but not in itself or in its own essential properties, but in consequence of its co-existence with far higher powers of a diverse kind in one and the same subject. Instinct in a rational, responsible, and self-conscious animal, is Understanding.

Such I apprehend to have been the Professor's view and exposition of instinct—and in confirmation of its truth, I would merely request my readers, from the numerous well-authenticated instances on record, to recall some one of the extraordinary actions of dogs for the preservation of their masters' lives, and even for the avenging of their deaths. In these instances we have the third species of the adaptive power in connexion with an apparently moral endwith an end in the proper sense of the word. Here the adaptive power co-exists with a purpose apparently voluntary, and the action seems neither predetermined by the organization of the animal, nor in any direct reference to his own preservation, nor to the continuance of his race. It is united with an imposing semblance of gratitude, fidelity, and disinterested love. We not only value the faithful brute; we attribute worth to him. This, I admit, is a problem, of which I have no solution to offer. One of the wisest of uninspired men has not hesitated to