Many instincts are so wonderful that their development will probably appear
to the reader a difficulty sufficient to overthrow my whole theory. I may
here premise, that I have nothing to do with the origin of the mental
powers, any more than I have with that of life itself. We are concerned
only with the diversities of instinct and of the other mental faculties in
animals of the same class.
I will not attempt any definition of instinct. It would be easy to show
that several distinct mental actions are commonly embraced by this term;
but every one understands what is meant, when it is said that instinct
impels the cuckoo to migrate and to lay her eggs in other birds' nests. An
action, which we ourselves require experience to enable us to perform, when
performed by an animal, more especially by a very young one, without
experience, and when performed by many individuals in the same way, without
their knowing for what purpose it is performed, is usually said to be
instinctive. But I could show that none of these characters are universal.
A little dose of judgment or reason, as Pierre Huber expresses it, often
comes into play, even with animals low in the scale of nature.
Frederick Cuvier and several of the older metaphysicians have compared
instinct with habit. This comparison gives, I think, an accurate notion of
the frame of mind under which an instinctive action is performed, but not
necessarily of its origin.
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