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Unconscious Memory by Samuel Butler
page 163 of 251 (64%)
impression made by this have to do with their idea of the weather
that will ensue? No one will ascribe to animals a power of
prognosticating the weather months beforehand by means of inferences
drawn logically from a series of observations, {119b} to the extent
of being able to foretell floods. It is far more probable that the
power of perceiving subtle differences of actual atmospheric
condition is nothing more than the sensual perception which acts as
motive--for a motive must assuredly be always present--when an
instinct comes into operation. It continues to hold good, therefore,
that the power of foreseeing the weather is a case of unconscious
clairvoyance, of which the stork which takes its departure for the
south four weeks earlier than usual knows no more than does the stag
when before a cold winter he grows himself a thicker pelt than is his
wont. On the one hand, animals have present in their consciousness a
perception of the actual state of the weather; on the other, their
ensuing action is precisely such as it would be if the idea present
with them was that of the weather that is about to come. This they
cannot consciously have; the only natural intermediate link,
therefore, between their conscious knowledge and their action is
supplied by unconscious idea, which, however, is always accurately
prescient, inasmuch as it contains something which is neither given
directly to the animal through sensual perception, nor can be deduced
inferentially through the understanding.

Most wonderful of all are the instincts connected with the
continuation of the species. The males always find out the females
of their own kind, but certainly not solely through their resemblance
to themselves. With many animals, as, for example, parasitic crabs,
the sexes so little resemble one another that the male would be more
likely to seek a mate from the females of a thousand other species
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