trace whatever in human nature. The actions of man which have been
loosely described as instinctive belong for the most part to those
classes of actions which we have already shown to be in no proper sense
of the word instinctive, that is, those concerned in the appetites and
in the functions of organic life. There are also numerous automatic and
habitual actions which are liable to be mistaken for instincts. Some
have included in the category of instincts those intuitive perceptions
and primary beliefs which are a part of our constitution, and are the
foundation of all our knowledge. But these propensities of thought and
feeling are of a higher nature than mere instincts; they are immutable
laws of the human mind, which time and physical changes cannot reach:
they do not seem to depend upon the physical organization, but to be
inherent in the soul itself. If these are instincts, then, why are not
all the ways in which the mind exerts itself instincts also, and reason
itself an instinct?

There is hardly any human action, feeling, or belief, which has not
been ranged under the term instinct. Hunger and thirst have been called
instincts; so have the faculty of speech, the use of the right hand in
preference to the left, the love of society, the desire to possess
property, the desire to avoid danger and prolong life, and the belief
in supernatural agencies, upon which is engrafted the religious
sentiment. We cannot, in this paper, attempt to analyze these and many
other similar examples which have been given as illustrations of
instinct in treatises of high repute, and show that they do not at all
come within that class of actions which we contrast with reason. In
regard to those actions of early infancy which have often been adduced
as illustrations of instinct, the physiologists of the present day are
agreed that they are as mechanical as the act of breathing. To place
these upon the same level with the complex and wonderful operations of