Anti-slavery bugle. [volume] (New-Lisbon, Ohio) 1845-1861, 1857-07-25
From the Philadelphia Ledger.
WHAT rs INSTINCT?

IL is not improbable to trace back the history of
an instinct. Teach q spaniel to beg for food, and
you may often trace in its pups o tendency to the
same habit. Let a setter be trained to set, and
its progeny will do SO instinctiveiy, though they
may never even witness the action performed.
The chicken, through countless generations, picks
up crumbs and insects from the ground, while the
the woodpecker, with beak adapted for it, sits
tapping the hollow beech tree"
We may take the eggs of the duck, and the un-
conscious hen will sit upon them and hatch them,
and guard the progeny as her own but no sooner
have these little ones cracked the shell, than by
an inward impulse, they seek for the water and
swim off, to the infinite terror of the poor hen
who Matched them, and who vainly tries to lutte
them away from what seems to her to be their GER
tain destruction.
This wisdom of the web foot, this propensity or
instinct, whence comes it? Neither by education
nor example, that is clear, neither is it anything
communicated by the hen, nor her life, nor her
instincts in any way transferred neither is it any
popularity in the matter of the egg, as analysis
could probably show. IL it then the result of or
ganization3 And if so, what does this mean but
the result Of motion 2
If we take an egg, and put the wet tip of the
tongue to the large end of it, we at once become
sensible of q gentle heat, if the egg is alive. Thi,
is then the germ of all the after vibrations Of life
stimulated by the vital warmth of the hen, anc
these pulsations transmit the instructive tendency
that iupeio II LUX W Tue WATER emOOuylDR I
kind of memory, or impulse, from former gener
atoms, quite distinct from that of the hen. These
vibrations organize the fluid of the egg into a form
corresponding with the idea which the whole pas
suggests as the intended future of the bird.
The uneducated but honest Christian sees, OF
thinks he sees, in this, however, the immediate
finger of God, a part of the all pervading mind o.
Him in whom we live and move, and have oul
being His wisdom directly imparting wisdom to
each creature according to its wants.
But, as we have already seen, q more extended
observation will indicate to a r~efectiye mind tina
instinct is, after all, in part at least, the result o.
fixed laws, and but as an innate tendency to re
produce actions that are habitual in the parent
And this very law, so far from allowing us to los,
sight of a designer, will conduct US back to a pre-
concerning mind, compromising, arranging ant
rewarding all actions, 80 that each v0lition shall
consolidate into an habitually recurring purpose
each purpose into an instinct, and each instinctiv
habit shall entirely mould even the physical sys
TEN in accordance with the whole-sharpenin
the beaks and following the bones of birds
giving web feet to the water fowl and claws t
beasts Of prey, the immaterial thus forming tn
material.
Ii then the differences of instincts are all mere
ly those of development of the inten tons an
habits OF various animals, through the course {
ages and generations, and if every exercise {
, every habit has in it the tendency to reproduce i
self and to become hereditary and iustinctive,i it i
, no measure lessons the marks of a purpose i
/ creation. Should it seem to remove us q ste
E further from the designer, it only thus enables +,
r to take broader views Of His profound design.