Another argument is furnished us, similar, but differing. The fœtus, previous to quickening, as after it, must exist in one of two states, either death or life. The former cannot take place, nor can it ever exist, except as a finality. If its signs do not at once manifest themselves, as is generally the case, and the fœtus be retained in utero, it must either become mummified or disintegrated; it can never again become vivified. If, therefore, death has not taken place, and we can conceive no other state of the fœtus save one, that, namely life, must exist from the beginning. These reasonings are strengthened by the evidence of analogy. The utter loss of direct influence by the female bird upon its offspring from the time the egg has left her, and the marked effect, originally, of the male; the independence in body, in movement, and in life, of young marsupial mammals, almost from the very moment of their conception, identical analogically with the intra-uterine state of other embryos,—nourishment by teat merely replacing that by placenta at an earlier period; the same in birds, shown by movements in their egg on cold immersion before the end of incubation; the permanence of low vitality, or of impaired or distorted nervous force, arising from early arrest or error of development, and necessarily contemporaneous with it, are all instances in point. Brute instincts are often thought wholly supplanted by human reason. That this is not so is proved by what obtains in the absence of reason, whether from the outset or subsequently occurring. Idiots and lunatics alike show the actual identity in this respect of man and the brute, however instinct, in the former, may normally be tempered by conscience and reason. Whatever ideas on the subject of abortion the human mind may have forced itself to entertain, let the slightest proof concerning the existence of fœtal life be alleged, and maternal instinct at once makes itself known: the parent, as after its birth, would often even perish to preserve her child. This is not conscience, which is stirred only by an afterthought, but instinct. Thus far, incidental proof concerning the commencement of fœtal life, and so the guilt of unjustifiable abortion. More decisive evidence is at hand. That the movements of the fœtus, subsequent to quickening, whatever the actual nature of that first sensation may be, declare the existence of intra-uterine life, is allowed by the world; by none more than by mothers themselves, whose statistics prove that after the perception of these movements criminal abortions are comparatively rare.