Vestiges of the natural history of creation / [Anon].

  • Robert Chambers
Date:
1844
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Vestiges of the natural history of creation / [Anon]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    355/408 page 347
    and quality, can be pampered or educated up to a kind of epicurism, that is, an indefiniteness of object and action. The same faculty acts limitedly in ourselves at first, dictating the special act of sucking ; afterwards it acquires indefiniteness. Such is the real nature of the distinction between what are called instincts and reason, upon which so many volumes have been written without profit to the world. All faculties are instinctive, that is, dependent on internal and inherent impulses. This term is therefore not specially applicable to either of the recognised modes of the operation of the faculties. We only, in the one case, see the faculty in an immature and slightly developed state; in the other, in its most advanced condition. In the one case it is definite, in the other indefinite, in its range of action. These terms would perhaps be the most suitable for expressing the distinction. In the humblest forms of being we can trace scarcely anything besides a definite action in a few of the faculties. Generally speaking, as we ascend in the scale, we see more and more of the faculties in exercise, and these tending more to the indefinite mode of manifestation. And for this there is the obvious reason in providence, that the lowest animals have all of them a very limited.
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