This is what might be termed the _inclusive style_ in argument. It is impossible to distinguish the premises from the conclusion. We have facts for arguments, and arguments for facts. He plays off a phantasmagoria of illustrations as proofs, like Sir Epicure Mammon in the Alchemist. It is like being in a round-about at a fair, or skating, or flying. It is not easy to make out even the terms of the question, so completely are they overlaid and involved one in the other, and that, as it should seem, purposely, or from a habit of confounding the plainest things. To proceed, however, to something more material. In treating of innate faculties, Dr. Spurzheim runs the following career, which will throw considerable light on the vagueness and contradictoriness of his general mode of reasoning. ‘Now it is beyond doubt, that all the instinctive aptitudes and inclinations of animals are innate. Is it not evident that the faculties by which the spider makes its web, the honeybee its cell, the beaver its hut, the bird its nest, &c. are inherent in the nature of these animals? When the young duck or tortoise runs towards the water as soon as hatched, when the bird brushes the worm with its bill, when the monkey, before he eats the may-bug, bites off its head, &c. all these and similar dispositions are conducive to the preservation of the animals; but they are not at all acquired.’ If by _acquired_, be meant that these last acts do not arise out of certain impressions made on the senses by different objects, (such as the agreeable or disagreeable smell of food, &c.) this is by no means either clear or acknowledged on all hands. ‘According to the same law,’ he adds, [What law?] ‘the hamster gathers corn and grain, the dog hides his superfluous food’—[This at any rate seems a rational act.]—‘the falcon kills the hare by driving his beak into its neck,’ &c. ‘In the same way, all instinctive manifestations of man must be innate. The new-born child sucks the fingers and seeks the breast, as the puppy and calf seek the dug.’ The circumstance here indiscreetly mentioned of the child sucking the fingers as well as the nipple, certainly does away the idea of _final causes_. It shows that the child, from a particular state of irritation of its mouth, fastens on any object calculated to allay that irritation, whether conducive to its sustenance or not. It is difficult sometimes to get children to take the breast. Dr. S. takes up a common prejudice, without any qualification or inquiry, while it suits his purpose, and lays it down without ceremony when it no longer serves the turn. He proceeds—