through fibres or particles of neurine. The physiologist assures us that we never think without some accompany ing action of the brain, and this may be perfectly true, for we never think without an act of memory. We begin our intellectual life with an act of memory, and to the last hour, and in every species of thought, memory and reason must be constantly associated. But it does not follow that the energy of the reason is accompanied by any other specific action of the brain than this of memory. Take a striking instance. What would the mathematician be without his memory? At every instant it is in intense exercise; suspend his memory, and you have suspended altogether the consciousness of the mathematician. And yet, that which constituted him the mathematician is that something more than memory for which there is no cerebral organ. Or, when the reason arranges the materials of sense and memory into sciencewhen it moulds or classes them into its own great generalisations of the True, the Good, and the Beautiful-such purely mental energies as these, with the emotions consequent upon their exercise, we cannot supply with any material organ, except, we repeat, as far as they are connected with the memory.

Let us return to this our organ of memory-this chief laboratory of the spirit where she is ever adding new and richer memories-converting what, if left to neglect, is but a hovel of mud, into a veritable palace of thought. Our author makes the following observation:-" It is clearly not sufficient that an impression should be transmitted to the brain for it to be remembered. An act of the mind itself is necessary for this purpose; and that, as Dr Hook has observed, is the act of attention.

Now, attention implies volition; that is, it is that effort of volition by which an object, which would otherwise have immediately passed away, is kept present to the mind during a certain period." A person receives a sharp blow; we think there is no doubt he will remember it;-what effort of attention or volition has been exercised in order to retain the impression? The force, or duration, or

repetition of any impression, are all elements to be considered in the probability of its being remembered. Does not this simple statement better accord with the facts than any curious theory about attention and volition?

We notice that some obscurity invariably steals over the generally clear and lucid exposition of our author, the moment such terms as volition, or voluntary movement, occur. He has allowed himself to be influenced by the current use of language, and those fictitious distinctions which so often establish themselves even in our philosophical vocabulary, instead of keeping his eye on the broad landmarks of nature. Voluntary movement comes in with memory. What of animal life passes prior to, or independent of, the development of memory, is merely the circuit of sensations and movements. Appetites, desires, instincts, as they exist in their primitive characteras yet unassociated with thought—are other names for sensations.

As a certain consciousness of muscular exertion accompanies all our voluntary movements, it has followed that, in the language of even the most correct writers, the term "voluntary," and more especially the term "volition," are applied to those cases where the element of memory or thought is wanting, and nothing exists of the voluntary movement but this consciousness of muscular exertion-itself a purely sensational phenomenon. And indeed many writers pride themselves upon preserving a nice distinction between will and volition. Good taste and general usage apply the word will more frequently to our moral actions, but there is no scientific distinction between them. Misled, (if we may venture to say so), or rather confused by this use of the term volition, Sir Benjamin Brodie is unable to contemplate any action of those muscles which become voluntary muscles by their connection with memory, without interposing some quite imaginary force which he calls volition-the laws of which imaginary force it is, of course, impossible to comprehend. "It is," he writes, "under the influence of volition that the contraction of muscles takes place for locomotion, speech, the procuring

tions, unless we arrive at some steadfast conclusions upon this subject of instinct. It is a stumbling-block that must be removed from our path. It lies there, a mysterious something between sensation and thought. We say that there cannot be, in any intelligible sense of the word, a special cerebral organ for an instinct; because, according to our definition, an instinct is that sympathy or harmony (an instance of that harmony which runs through all nature) established directly between nerve and nerve, and limb and limb. What is more than this is thought, and falls under our great organ of memory.

Human actions have become so complicated with human thought, that by general consent we appeal to the lower animals when we would discuss the nature of instinct. To them, therefore, we must turn for a moment.

There is, perhaps, no word in the language which has been used so variously and vaguely as this of instinct. Sometimes we hear it employed to designate all the actions of the lower animals; and those which are most plainly indicative of thought or memory are singled out as remarkable instances of instinct. At other times it is even employed to designate some of the highest attributes of the human mind, and anything is called instinctive which wears a primary character, and refers us to no known cause. The author before us slides into this lax use of the term in the following passage: "Still it seems to me that to reason well is the result of an instinct originally implanted in us, rather than of instruction; and that a child or a peasant reasons quite as accurately on the thing before him and within the sphere of his knowledge, as those who are versed in all the rules of logic." But the only use of the

term which we are called upon seriously to investigate, is that which opposes instinct to reason as some peculiar mode of thought. Speaking of the human understanding, we all acknowledge that ideas of individual objects are derived only through the senses; we all acknowledge that to act from a purpose, to use means to an end, implies an exercise of memory. Now, every animal has some mode of taking its prey, or of framing a shelter or nest for itself, in which it is quite perfect, without any teaching or experience whatever. It acts as if from design, and yet what we understand as thought or design could not have been present. Are we to say that there is here manifested some quite different mode of thinking, or of ideation, than that which men are cognisant of Or, recognising the fact that all the phenomena of nature must wear this aspect of design, shall we not place the design here also at once and only in the great Author of nature, and seek to explain the phenomena before us by such causes as we know to exist-by sensational impulses or irritability, combined with such faculty of perception and memory as the animal may have in common with man? That a measure of what we call judgment and intelligence lies in the very nature of perception, and memory itself, we have already intimated.

It is this last view which has forced itself upon our convictions, though we are afraid we shall not be able to do justice to it in our present limits. We object entirely to the introduction of an instinctive mode of thought. That through their organs of sense animals have sensations different from ours, is past dispute. There is no occasion to introduce this other startling anomaly of a thinking which originates in a quite different manner.

Through the olfactory nerves alone what a variety of sensations is evidently diffused through the various quadrupeds, and fishes, and birds, which people the earth, the sea, and the air! Nor can any one for a moment have reflected upon the laws of animal life without noticing the direct connection established between sensations, or rather those irritabilities and contractilities which accompany sensation, and the motions of the variously constructed limbs. A peculiar scent at once calls into play those internal sensations we describe as hunger or appetite; and these again throw every limb into motion, as well those that capture the prey as those that devour it. Nor is it through the scent alone that the animal is roused into activity; that the sight also and the hearing communicate peculiar nervous tremours to different animals is equally certain. What else can be that antipathy which the mere sight of one animal immediately excites in another, leading in one case to hostile movement, and in another to flight? A complete series of actions is produced, in which the relation of means to an end is indeed most conspicuous, without the intervention, however, of thought on the part of the animal.

We repeat, in order to avoid mistake, that we do not dispute the possession of memory in any case where there is fair ground for presuming its existence; and in memory itself, there is involved a certain measure of that species of intelligence, which uses means to an end. It may happen, that in some of the lower animals memory, acting in a very narrow circle on a few objects of urgent want, may display singular vigour and tenacity. Neither do we think that comparative anatomy authorises us to conclude that, where a cerebrum is not developed, memory cannot exist; because comparative anatomy itself teaches us, that a function which, in its higher stage of development, has a special organ, may, in a lower stage, be combined with other functions in a common tissue. The ganglion which occupies the head of an insect may perform the function which in the vertebrate animal devolves upon the cerebrum. What we dispute is, that

there is in animals (and of course in man) any peculiar mode of thinking to be called instinct. We oppose instinct to reason not because it is some different mode of thought, but because it is a mode of action in which thought does not occur. It is developed prior to the development of memory.

We are aware that the popular impression is here against us, and that a sort of intuitive knowledge is ascribed very liberally to the animal kingdom. We must admit also that this popular impression has been supported by great names, and great authorities. Cuvier has expressed the opinion that the lower animals are "moved by ideas which they do not owe to their sensations, but which flow immediately from the brain." Such an hypothesis contradicts all we do know of the nature of that thought which represents external objects to us; and we may safely say, therefore, that it is not to be received till other modes of explanation in harmony with that knowledge have been tried. Some writers, struck with the singular fact that habits acquired by one generation of animals become hereditary instincts in subsequent generations, have concluded that this could be explained only by the supposition that some modified form of the brain had been inherited. But the fact is by no means established that the effect of a habit (as that of the pointer dog) is to modify exclusively the brain. There is much in the subject of habit that is very obscure. This, at all events, is quite clear, that the transformation of a habit into an instinct, is only one branch of the still larger subject-What is the law by which the instincts of a race of animals are modified? That they do admit of change is certain, old ones decaying from non-exercise, and new ones being introduced.

We shall obtain no support to our opinions from the author before us. Sir Benjamin Brodie makes many observations upon instinct with which we entirely concur; but in the passage where he approaches nearest to a definition of the term, he couples it with, "voluntary exercise of the muscles," and speaks of it habitually as a species of knowledge: there is much, however, in the following quotation for which

we very willingly avail ourself of his authority.

"Food is required because life cannot be maintained without it. But no one under ordinary circumstances thinks of this ultimate object. We have an uneasy sensation which we call hunger, and it is merely to remove this sensation that we are led to eat. This is the simplest form of instinct, and it goes far towards explaining others which are more complicated. The desire for food is the same in the newly-born child as in the grown-up man; and, when applied to his mother's breast, he knows at once how to obtain it by bringing several pairs of muscles of his mouth and throat successively into action, making the process of suction. The newly-born calf knows at once how to bal ance himself on his four legs, to walk and seek the food with which he is supplied by his mother. The duckling hatched by the hen, as soon as his muscular powers are sufficiently developed, is impelled by the desire to enter the neighbouring pond, and when in the water, without example or instruction, he calls certain muscles into action, and is enabled to swim. When a sow is delivered of a litter, each young pig, as it is born, runs at once to take possession of one of his mother's nipples, which he considers as his peculiar property ever afterwards."

Many probably would be ready to admit that the peculiar impulse which led the duckling into the water, and the movement of its limbs in that element, might be explained without supposing any knowledge on the part of the animal-might be resolved into mere vital phenomena as distinguished from psychical. But when a more complex series of actions is performed, when some peculiar ingenuity, as it appears, is displayed in capturing prey, or building a nest, they cannot refrain from the conclusion that actions so like those which would be produced by human thought, really had their origin in some species of thought. We know no way of successfully combating this tendency of the imagination, except that of directing the attention to those lower forms of animal life, where there is a considerable complexity of action, and where there is absolutely no ground whatever for supposing the existence

of any form of thought, or any cerebral function. By so doing the mind familiarises itself with the truth, that a large portion of animal life is complete in itself, independently of the develop ment of memory.

We will take up Mr Rymer Jones's book on the Animal Kingdom.* It will supply us with the facts we are in want of; and it will also supply us with a striking illustration of the very tendency of the imagination we have to contend against. For we shall see that even a Professor of Zoology cannot look upon the lowest forms of animated nature without investing them with human feelings, and human powers-with faculties of the human being which he would no doubt reclaim from them the moment his attention was seriously drawn to the subject.

There is no fact in physiology more certain than that irritability or contractility exists prior to, or independent of sensation. The series of movements which a decapitated frog will perform on the application of very ordinary stimulants; those movements in the human frame, which take place without any accompanying sensation, and which are ranged under the title of reflex action,-a host of experiments and observations establish beyond a doubt, that both where there is, and where there is not, a visible nervous system, complex and harmonious actions are performed on the mere basis of irritability or contractility. The simplest order in the animal kingdom, here called the Acrita, are manifestly endowed with no higher vital property than this, we meet with no one who seriously believes that they are sensitive. The sponge is the first of these Acrita which Mr Jones describes; he finds in it no trace whatever of sensation, no signs that it feels, no organisation such as we are accustomed to consider necessary to sensation. But in the body of the old sponges grow certain "yellowish gelatinous granules" or "gemules," destined to be future sponges. Now, mark how soon the imagination seizes upon our writer, in his description of these youthful