species; and its constant hereditary nature. In regard to the
uniformity of instinct throughout each species, it may be further
remarked, that this seems to be very constantly preserved in the lowest
divisions of the animal kingdom. Among the Articulates, also, instinct
appears almost unvarying; and it is in this department among the insect
tribes that the most striking manifestations of instinct are to be met
with. When we arrive among the higher orders of the Vertebrates, we
find in some species that each individual is capable of some
modification of its actions, according to the particular circumstances
in which it finds itself placed. But throughout the long series of
animals, from the polype to man, there is instinctive action more or
less in amount in every species, with, perhaps, the exception of man
alone. The variety of that endowment, which is adapted to definite
objects, means, and results, in each particular one of the five hundred
thousand species estimated to be now living, may well call forth our
admiration and astonishment at the magnitude and extent of the
prospective contrivance of the Creator. How various the relations of
all these animals to each other and to the inanimate world about them!
and yet how admirable the adjustments of that immaterial principle
which regulates their lives, so as to secure the well-being of each and
the symmetry of the general plan!

There has been much diversity of opinion as to the existence of
instincts in the human species,--some making the whole mind of man
nothing but a bundle of instincts, and others wholly denying him any
endowment of this nature, while others still have given him a complex
mental nature, and have, moreover, declared that intellect and instinct
in him are so interwoven that it is impossible to tell where the one
begins and the other ends. But we believe, with the author of "Ancient
Metaphysics," that in Nature, however intimately things are blended