I do not think that any one can trace out the line of demarcation
between reason and instinct. Instinct in many points in wonderful,
especially among insects, but where it is wonderful, it is a blind
obedience, and inherited from generation to generation. We observe, as
in the case of the bees, that they obey the truest laws of mathematics,
and from these laws they never have deviated from their creation, and
that all animals, as far as their self-defence or their sustenance is
concerned, show a wonderful blind obedience to an unerring power, and a
sagacity almost superior to reason. But wonderful as this is, it is
still but instinct, as the progenitors of the race were equally guided
by it, and it is handed down without any improvement, or any decay in
its power. Now if it could be asserted that the instinct of animals was
only thus inherited from race to race, and could "go no farther," the
line of demarcation between reason and instinct would at once be
manifest, as instinct would be blindly following certain fixed laws,
while reason would ever be assisted by memory and invention. But we
have not this boasted advantage on the side of reason, for animals have
both memory and invention, and, moreover, if they have not speech, they
have equal means of communicating their ideas. That this memory and
invention cannot be so much exercised as our own, may be true, but it is
exercised to an extent equal to their wants, and they look no further;
that is to say, that if any want not prepared for, or anything should
take place interfering with their habits and economy, instinct will
enable them to meet the difficulty. There is nothing more wonderful
than the application of mechanical power by ants. No engineer could
calculate with greater nicety, and no set of men work together with such
combination of force. After they have made ineffectual attempts to
remove a heavy body, you will observe them to meet together, consult
among themselves, and commence an entire new plan of operations. Bees,
also, are always prepared to meet any new difficulty. If the _sphinx
atropos_, or death's head moth, forces its way into the hive, the bees
are well known, after having killed it with their stings, to embalm the
dead body with wax--their reason for this is, that the body was too
large for them to remove through the passage by which it entered, and
they would avoid the unpleasant smell of the carcass. It may be argued,
that instinct had always imparted to them this knowledge; but if so,
they must have had a fresh accession of instinct after they had been
domiciled with men: for it is well known that the hole in the tree, in
which the wild bees form their cells, is invariably too small to admit
any animal larger than themselves, and the bodies of such sized animals
they could remove with as much ease as they do the bodies of their own
dead.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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