Excerpt from On the Habits and Instincts of Animals

Experience, and without a knowledge of the end in view, they are impelled to the performance of certain actions, tending to the well-being of the individual, and the preservation of the species. So far, then, and considered as merely a general definition, or rather description, of instinct, this opinion is perfectly satis factory; but it does not reach all the various bearings of this complicated subject. When we find some animals not only impelled to perform certain necessary func tions in a regular and unvarying manner, one gene ration following another in exactly the same track, and supplying their different wants in precisely the same manner, -but also that many others actually vary in what should seem to be the universal ordination of nature, and, as if in obedience to the deductions of reason, accurately adapting their plans to their circum stances, and their measures to those unexpected changes which accident may have wrought in their situation, with these facts upon record, we feel it is not sur prising that some who have written on the subject have gone a step further. They have, in fact, sought to solve the question, by admitting that, besides the faculty of instinct, animals may, in an inferior degree, also possess that of reason. But this admission brings with it fresh difficulties. If once We allow the least degree of reason to the brute creation, we must concede a portion of it altogether incompatible with their situation. Ive must admit that the bee, for instance, is guided in her wonderful Operations, by an acquaintance with those principles of science, which man has required time and reflection to discover. We must, in short, acknow ledge her both a geometrician and a philosopher and endue her with a perception of causes and effects, in consistent with the other habits and appearances of the creature, absolutely derogatory to the superior nature of man. (2) A much more probable solution of this question, and one far more conformable to the relative positions of man and brute, is afforded by the idea, that animals.

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