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SECT.  XVI.

OF INSTINCT.

  Haud equidem credo, quia sit divinitus illis
  Ingenium, aut rerum fato prudentia major.—­Virg.  Georg.  L. I. 415.

I. Instinctive actions defined.  Of connate passions. II. Of the sensations and motions of the foetus in the womb. III. Some animals are more perfectly formed than others before nativity.  Of learning to walk. IV. Of the swallowing, breathing, sucking, pecking, and lapping of young animals. V. Of the sense of smell, and its uses to animals.  Why cats do not eat their kittens. VI. Of the accuracy of sight in mankind, and their sense of beauty.  Of the sense of touch in elephants, monkies, beavers, men. VII. Of natural language. VIII. The origin of natural language; 1. the language of fear; 2. of grief; 3. of tender pleasure; 4. of serene pleasure; 5. of anger; 6. of attention. IX. Artificial language of turkies, hens, ducklings, wagtails, cuckoos, rabbits, dogs, and nightingales. X. Of music; of tooth-edge; of a good ear; of architecture. XI. Of acquired knowledge; of foxes, rooks, fieldfares, lapwings, dogs, cats, horses, crows, and pelicans. XII. Of birds of passage, dormice, snakes, bats, swallows, quails, ringdoves, stare, chaffinch, hoopoe, chatterer, hawfinch, crossbill, rails and cranes. XIII. Of birds nests; of the cuckoo; of swallows nests; of the taylor bird. XIV. Of the old soldier; of haddocks, cods, and dog fish; of the remora; of crabs, herrings, and salmon. XV. Of spiders, caterpillars, ants, and the ichneumon. XVI. 1. Of locusts, gnats; 2. bees; 3. dormice, flies, worms, ants, and wasps. XVII. Of the faculty that distinguishes man from the brutes.

I. All those internal motions of animal bodies, which contribute to digest their aliment, produce their secretions, repair their injuries, or increase their growth, are performed without our attention or consciousness.  They exist as well in our sleep, as in our waking hours, as well in the foetus during the time of gestation, as in the infant after nativity, and proceed with equal regularity in the vegetable as in the animal system.  These motions have been shewn in a former part of this work to depend on the irritations of peculiar fluids, and as they have never been classed amongst the instinctive actions of animals, are precluded from our present disquisition.

But all those actions of men or animals, that are attended with consciousness, and seem neither to have been directed by their appetites, taught by their experience, nor deduced from observation or tradition, have been referred to the power of instinct.  And this power has been explained to be a divine something, a kind of inspiration; whilst the poor animal, that possesses it, has been thought little better than a machine!