Zoonomia; Or, the Laws of Organic Life, Vol. I

by Erasmus Darwin

Ingenium, aut rerum fato prudentia major.—Virg. Georg. L. I. 415.

[I]. Instinctive actions defined. Of connate passions. [II]. Of the sensations and motions of the fœtus in the womb. [III]. Some animals are more perfectly formed than others before nativity. Of learning to walk. [IV]. Of the swallowing, breathing, sucking, pecking, and lapping of young animals. [V]. Of the sense of smell, and its uses to animals. Why cats do not eat their kittens. [VI]. Of the accuracy of sight in mankind, and their sense of beauty. Of the sense of touch in elephants, monkies, beavers, men. [VII]. Of natural language. [VIII]. The origin of natural language; [1]. the language of fear; [2]. of grief; [3]. of tender pleasure; [4]. of serene pleasure; [5]. of anger; [6]. of attention. [IX]. Artificial language of turkies, hens, ducklings, wagtails, cuckoos, rabbits, dogs, and nightingales. [X]. Of music; of tooth-edge; of a good ear; of architecture. [XI]. Of acquired knowledge; of foxes, rooks, fieldfares, lapwings, dogs, cats, horses, crows, and pelicans. [XII]. Of birds of passage, dormice, snakes, bats, swallows, quails, ringdoves, stare, chaffinch, hoopoe, chatterer, hawfinch, crossbill, rails and cranes. [XIII]. Of birds nests; of the cuckoo; of swallows nests; of the taylor bird. [XIV]. Of the old soldier; of haddocks, cods, and dog fish; of the remora; of crabs, herrings, and salmon. [XV]. Of spiders, caterpillars, ants, and the ichneumon. [XVI]. [1]. Of locusts, gnats; [2]. bees; [3]. dormice, flies, worms, ants, and wasps. [XVII]. Of the faculty that distinguishes man from the brutes.

[I]. All those internal motions of animal bodies, which contribute to digest their aliment, produce their secretions, repair their injuries, or increase their growth, are performed without our attention or consciousness. They exist as well in our sleep, as in our waking hours, as well in the fœtus during the time of gestation, as in the infant after nativity, and proceed with equal regularity in the vegetable as in the animal system. These motions have been shewn in a former part of this work to depend on the irritations of peculiar fluids, and as they have never been classed amongst the instinctive actions of animals, are precluded from our present disquisition.

But all those actions of men or animals, that are attended with consciousness, and seem neither to have been directed by their appetites, taught by their experience, nor deduced from observation or tradition, have been referred to the power of instinct. And this power has been explained to be a divine something, a kind of inspiration; whilst the poor animal, that possesses it, has been thought little better than a machine!

The irksomeness, that attends a continued attitude of the body, or the pains, that we receive from heat, cold, hunger, or other injurious circumstances, excite us to general locomotion: and our senses are so formed and constituted by the hand of nature, that certain objects present us with pleasure, others with pain, and we are induced to approach and embrace these, to avoid and abhor those, as such sensations direct us.

Thus the palates of some animals are gratefully affected by the mastication of fruits, others of grains, and others of flesh; and they are thence instigated to attain, and to consume those materials; and are furnished with powers of muscular motion, and of digestion proper for such purposes.

These sensations and desires constitute a part of our system, as our muscles and bones constitute another part: and hence they may alike be termed natural or connate; but neither of them can properly be termed instinctive: as the word instinct in its usual acceptation refers only to the actions of animals, as above explained: the origin of these actions is the subject of our present enquiry.

The reader is intreated carefully to attend to this definition of instinctive actions, lest by using the word instinct without adjoining any accurate idea to it, he may not only include the natural desires of love and hunger, and the natural sensations of pain or pleasure, but the figure and contexture of the body, and the faculty of reason itself under this general term.

[II]. We experience some sensations, and perform some actions before our nativity; the sensations of cold and warmth, agitation and rest, fulness and inanition, are instances of the former; and the repeated struggles of the limbs of the fœtus, which begin about the middle of gestation, and those motions by which it frequently wraps the umbilical chord around its neck or body, and even sometimes ties it on a knot; are instances of the latter. Smellie's Midwifery, (Vol. I. p. 182.)

By a due attention to these circumstances many of the actions of young animals, which at first sight seemed only referable to an inexplicable instinct, will appear to have been acquired like all other animal actions, that are attended with consciousness, by the repeated efforts of our muscles under the conduct of our sensations or desires.