§ II.—CHAPTER XI.

INSTINCT.

BEFORE passing onward in our inductive psychological survey, we are met by a question of special theistic interest, in regard to the display of mind in certain of the lower animals. We do not here, indeed, propose to meddle with the general question of animal mind, which presents so many apparently insuperable difficulties; but that peculiar manifestation of intelligence, in many of the lower creation, which has received the name of “Instinct,” and which has been supposed to bear with a very conclusive effect upon our subject, demands from us a passing notice.

The cell-making of the bee, and the nest-building of the bird, are familiar examples of instinct. The mental power, displayed by the animal in these operations, appears to be wholly singular. In ordinary cases, mind works only according to instruction and experience: it is dependent on education, and increases with exercise. In these and other similar cases it operates, in the language of Paley, “prior to experience, and independent of instruction.” Nor is 195this all. The definition of Paley—broadly as it demarcates the mode of instinct from that of mind in the ordinary sense—is considered by Lord Brougham to fail in expressing the most essential element of distinction between the two; viz., the conscious intention or foresight which is ever present in the one case in any effort of higher constructiveness, but which, in many cases of instinct, it seems wholly impossible to conceive present. The bee or the bird, for example, not only works towards the most beautiful results—builds the one its cell, and the other its nest—with a skill and precision which human effort only approaches at a distance,—neither of them having ever seen a cell or a nest before, or having ever previously tried to make one; but, in many cases, there seems also, as the most wonderful fact of all, the certain absence of any foresight of the end towards which all this animal ingenuity is expended. In the case of the bee, as his lordship has well put it in his discussion with Lord Althorpe, in the first of his dialogues, “I see her doing certain things which are manifestly to produce an effect she can know nothing about—or example, making a cell, and furnishing it with carpets and with liquid, fit to hold and to cherish safely a tender grub, and knowing nothing, of course, about grubs, or that any grub is ever to come, or that any such use, perhaps any use at all, is ever to be made of the work she is about. Indeed, I see another insect—the solitary wasp—bring a given number of small grubs, and deposit them in a hole which she has made over her egg, just grubs enough to maintain the worm that egg will produce when hatched—and yet this wasp never saw 196an egg produce a worm—nor ever saw a worm—nay, is to be dead long before the worm can be in existence; and, moreover, she never has in any way tasted or used these grubs, or used the hole she made, except for the prospective benefit of the unknown worm she is never to see. In all these cases, then, the animal works positively without knowledge, and in the dark. She also works without designing anything, and yet she works to a certain defined and important purpose.”¹⁰⁸¹⁰⁸   Dialogues on Instinct, pp. 25, 26.

It is, of course, impossible to pronounce so decidedly as to the absence of design, on the part of the animal, towards the end for which she is working, as it is to pronounce regarding her want of instruction. We have no means of absolutely determining the relation of the animal’s consciousness to her work; whereas it is easy to ascertain, and is beyond all dispute, that she has never learned her art from others. She is as perfect at it at the first as at the last; and every bee, and every succeeding race of bees, works exactly in the same manner, and with the same exact degree of perfection—all which plainly declares the endowment to be of a specific character, distinct from ordinary intelligence. There is, however, as in the cases described, and certain others, the strongest evidence for concluding in the animal ignorance of intention towards the special end for which she works. If we did the same things, we know we should be planning in ignorance. And even those who have endeavoured most earnestly to reduce the operations of instinct to the category of ordinary intelligence, have been found to acknowledge 197such an absence of foresight in the animal in cases where the most refined and difficult end is yet subserved.¹⁰⁹¹⁰⁹   CHAMBERS’S Papers for the People, No. 182, p. 29.

It has been a favourite attempt, it is true, of certain naturalists to explain such examples of animal skill by the aid of simple sensations. The bee and the bird are supposed to proceed in their work under the guidance of certain corporeal feelings, which only reach their gratification in its accomplishment. But, granting this, which is very probable, it seems to go but a little way towards an explanation; for, while such sensations may account for the animal’s impulse toward her work, and even her continuance in it, they can never surely account for her ability to perform it. They may prompt it, but it is inconceivable that they can execute it; and we find, accordingly, that the very writers who would reduce the whole process to a series of sensations, many of them purely hypothetical, are yet, in the very nature of the case, obliged to call in a “constructive head” and a “stroke of genius “to complete the work. No one, indeed, could desire a better exposure of the futility of all such attempts to account for instinct on the mere ground of sensation, than that which is furnished by the very character of these attempts, as described by the writers in question. The impression which they must make on every mind, which is less eager to support an hypothesis than to ascertain the truth, is in the highest degree unsatisfactory. The mystery, as explained, is only tenfold more mysterious, while the explanation itself is incumbered by an amount of hypothesis which renders it wholly valueless.¹¹⁰¹¹⁰   Vide Papers for the People, No 182, pp. 30, 31,—which we mention because of the eminent ability that marks it, entirely inconclusive as we conceive its reasoning to be.

The sensational view of instinct has been fully discussed by Lord Brougham in his well-known Dialogues—his interlocutor urging, with great acuteness, all its supposed force of explanation. It is impossible not to feel that it receives a very thorough and candid examination, and that it is rightly pronounced completely wanting at once in its arbitrariness, and in its failure, even if its arbitrariness were overlooked, to compass the most essential conditions of the problem. His lordship has shown this with great minuteness, and with the most undeniable success in the special case of the bee; and we cannot do better than refer any of our readers, who would more fully investigate the subject, to his interesting volume. It seems to us, upon the whole, that we are clearly warranted in asserting the operations of instinct to be often unconscious in reference to the end which they specially accomplish. Nay, it seems to be, as Lord Brougham contends, that it is this element of blind instrumentality in the production of a highly-wrought intellectual result that we specifically mean by instinct. It is the disproportion and inadequacy of the apparent means to the end which constitutes the marvel, and has so fixed curiosity upon it.

Let us see, then, what is the bearing of this upon our subject. In such instinctive operations, we have the presence of a very high degree of intelligence. The important question arises, whose intelligence? The whole result of 199our examination of the facts has been to show that it is not, in any common sense, the intelligence of the animal that is here at work. There are some of the facts, as the rare mathematical qualities of the bees’ work, which imply a knowledge that man has only attained by the most difficult and gradual mental processes,¹¹¹¹¹¹   The hexagonal character of the bees’ cell, and the purpose thereby so admirably served of the utmost possible saving of space, are so well known that it is unnecessary to do more than allude to them. This peculiar property of the hexagon was only ascertained by man in the progress of mathematical discovery. It is particularly deserving of notice, that certain doubts which had been cast upon the mathematical perfection of the bees’ work have been completely dissipated by Lord Brougham, and much new and interesting light thus reflected on its highly intellectual character. From the analysis of a young mathematician of the name of Kœnig, a pupil of Bernoulli, a discrepancy of two minutes was supposed to be found between the measurement of Maraldi of the actual angles of the cell, and that of the angles that made the greatest saving of wax. His lordship, however, by solving the problem in another way, found that the bee was right, and the analyst wrong; and other mathematicians corroborate him in this result. In another respect also, as to the saving of the wax in relation to the dimensions of the cell, which had been disputed by a Berlin academician, he vindicates the bee triumphantly against her critic. and these alone would seem, from the first, to preclude the idea of the directing intelligence being that of the animal. But the strongest evidence against such a supposition consists certainly in the peculiar character of the mental power which here appears; displaying itself at once in such full and exquisite perfection, and with such unerring success accomplishing ends, of which it is incredible to conceive any prevision in the animal. If we cannot, therefore, accredit the animal itself with either the rare skill or the conscious purpose manifested in the operations before us, are we not carried directly upward to the Divine intelligence working in and through the 200animal? The argument may perhaps be stated more explicitly thus: “We have here a mental process of a very high order; we must find a mental agent. Such an agent we do not find in the animal; it appears, on the contrary, from all evidence, to be a mere blind instrument. We are forced, therefore, to admit a higher agent. This agent can only be the Supreme Intelligence everywhere present in creation.

The conclusion which is here expressed is well known to be that in which many of the highest and most competent minds have rested. It seems to have been that of Newton, if his words, as quoted by Lord Brougham, are not yet entirely explicit.¹¹²¹¹²   Dialogues, pp. 61-62. Pope, in his well-known lines,¹¹³¹¹³ “See then the acting and comparing powers, One in their nature,—which are two in ours; And reason raise o’er instinct as you can, In this ’tis God that acts, in that ’tis man.”—Essay. and Addison,¹¹⁴¹¹⁴   Spectator, No. 120. although with less clearness, have expressed the same truth. His lordship, in his second Dialogue, argues it at great length, and with great force, so as to leave a strong impression in its favour on the mind of every candid reader, if he may yet feel some parts of the argument not very lucid or satisfactory.

The conclusion is an important one for our subject. Even if we do not assign it any exclusive weight,—as, according to our whole view, it is not so much exclusive in its character as it has been commonly supposed to be,—it yet possesses an 201interesting force which claims recognition in our inductive ascent. All nature and all life reveal a present Deity. Their mystery is only intelligible in such a presence. But here, in this special mystery, we appear to see the special presence of Divine agency—the immediate operation of the Divine Mind.