CHAPTER III.

OF INSTINCT.

"Il est dangereux de trop faire voir a l'homme combien il est egal aux bêtes, sans lui montrer sa grandeur. Il est encore dangereux de lui faire trop voir sa grandeur sans sa basesse; il est encore plus dangereux di lui laisser ignorer l'une et l'autre."

PASCAL.

INSTINCT is that impulse without reasoning, which determines in an invariable manner the character, the habits, and the manners of animals. Each species has its instinct which distinguishes it. Simple instinct, or instinct almost without an admixture of intelligence, shows itself especially in insects. Their existence is so short, that God would not confide to time the care of instructing them. They come, then, upon the earth already taught; knowing their parts, if one may so speak, and requiring neither lessons nor examples in order to fulfil their destiny. On seeing the stratagems, the works, the combats, the attack and defence of these armed multitudes, I felt astonished that the picture has not varied since the commencement of the world; all the different species are at war, and yet one does not annihilate the other; one is not more powerful than another. There is in this chaos of destruction and reproduction, in these varieties of powers and instincts, a harmony which regulates, an intelligence which presides over all. One feels that these little joyful or funereal dramas have been com

posed by the same author, that one hand directs, that it is a single work, of which the entrances and the exits are combined in such a manner as perpetually to last. The unity of God manifests itself even in the wonders of this little world.

The foresight of instinct is sometimes twofold in the same insect. The caterpillar lives upon the tree which it likes, forms itself a winding-sheet, or buries itself in its chrysalis, changes its form, and reappears with the gorgeous wings of the butterfly. During this long sleep the spirit is metamorphosed as well as the body; one would say that a master had been to instruct it in its tomb. No apprenticeship, no trial of its new life, the crawling and destructive insect at once expands its wings, abandons the plant without which it could not have lived, disdains the leaves, its former food, flies from flower to flower, to imbibe a juice which it does not know; its character, its taste, its habits, all are changed; it has the life of a bee, of a bird, after having possessed the instinct of a caterpillar.

Are there two instincts in the same animal? What became of the second during the action of the first? Does a new organization suffice to determine new habits? What matters? all the imaginable explanations of this double phenomenon, whether they be moral or physiological, could only establish this one fact-there is foresight.

Instinct is then a foresight; and further, it is an eternal foresight. The eyes of our children will see the insect with its bright wings burst from its tomb and mount up towards heaven, just as in former days the eyes of Plato saw it, when he regarded it as the emblem of immortality.

But instinct produces something more than the stratagems, the combats, and the character of animals; it has its general laws, which act in a uniform manner upon all

organised matter. Such, for example, is maternal love, that energetic sentiment and protecting power by which the most feeble beings are universally guarded at their birth. It is true that this law, which ascends by gradations from the insect up to man, suffers some exceptions, but they are only exceptions, not an abandonment. Where the cares of the mother are wanting, nature is not wanting. Observe fishes; they deposit their eggs by millions, just as plants deposit their seeds, so that the multiplicity of the germs saves the species as well as maternal love could have done.

I see elsewhere a destructive bird of which Providence seems to wish to limit the multiplication.* The form of its belly does not allow it to hatch, and it is ignorant of the art of constructing a nest; yet it does not indifferently leave on the ground the only egg which contains its posterity; it seeks a nest, as if it knew the use of one, and deposits its egg in it, as if it could foresee the necessity of its being hatched; it gives a mother to its young one, as if it felt the maternal sentiment. All these combinations are not derived from it, they exist in it, and revive in each bird of its kind; they are not its intelligence—but the intelligence of him who will preserve his work. Thus the exception comes to the support of the general law, the same design is evident.

I take pleasure in demonstrating both the wonders of instinct, and the great foresight which is attached to them. Isolated instinct will always be an inexplicable thing. The flight of a gnat, the industry of a spider, the labours of a wasp, in providing a shelter for a posterity which it will never see, surpass human comprehension; but the unity of these facts, their operation in the harmonies of the

The Cuckoo.

earth: instinct, as a general law of nature, establishing the equilibrium, and founding the duration, reveal an intelligent cause, and this cause being once ascertained, all is explained.

Pure instinct is but a law of nature, like germination ; there is only in it one degree more towards life. Insects seek their prey, as the roots of vegetables choose their soil; they enclose and defend their eggs, as the plant encloses and warms its sprouts; their power is innate, without will and without consciousness. You draw out the sting from a wasp, nevertheless, for a long time afterwards it attempts to sting. You tear off the claw of a crab, yet it still attempts to take hold. It is evident that this is a law imposed upon matter, but this law is always the expression of a maternal solicitude for the individual, subject to the conservation of the species and the harmony of the whole.

Thus, in investigating instinct, I have not failed to perceive that the question is not merely that of a faculty but of a law. Hence I ought to give up the study of the phenomena, and seek for the object of this law, in order to ascend to its cause. This is all that we are permitted to know upon the subject; to ask more is to open the chaos of questions which cannot be solved, because their solution is useless. All the explanations of genius succumb before an insect; all the difficulties of metaphysics disappear before the presence of God,

If then animals possessed no more than instinct, the question would be one without danger, as regards our souls; it would be restricted to the examination of a law, above which man finds himself placed by his conscience, his will, and his liberty. But on looking higher in the scale of beings, on ascending from animals with a ganglionic nervous system, (insects to vertebrated animals, mammi

fera, &c.,) I perceive a something superior to instinct. Actions are not merely imposed, they are modified and multiplied according to circumstances and wants. I observe perceptions, memory, ideas, and a will. It is no longer the transcendental but necessary geometry of the spider or of the bee; it is the free intelligence of a being which reflects and chooses. The organisation is changed in proportion as new faculties appear. Insects have no brain-I perceive one in the horse, and in the dog. There is an instrument for the intelligence, just as there is one for instinct. Here the difficulty is unbounded. Whilst I saw in animals no more than instinct, my mind was calm : now that I discover a brain, senses, and intelligence, my soul becomes uneasy: it understands that the question might even ascend to itself. In its anxiety it interrogates itself; it compares, it seeks to throw off an odious animality. Hard contest between mind and matter, in which the mind at last recognizes its greatness, in the very desire which it experiences to separate itself from the rest of the creation!

CHAPTER IV.

OF INTELLIGENCE IN ANIMALS.

"Ainsi les bêtes sentent, comparent, jugent, réfléchissent, concluent, se résouviennent, etc. Elles ont, en fait d'idées suivies tout ce dont on à besoin pour parler."

LEROY.-Lettres philosophiques sur l'intelligence des Animaux.

We see of man no more than his body; a body subject to all the wants-to all the passions-of animals; a flesh,