ingale migrates, before having any experience. Is it attention, reflection, induction? But why does each species of animal direct its attention to a different and peculiar object? Why do all individuals of the same species fix theirs always on the same object? Why, even, does it not depend on man to acquire a high degree of attention or faculty of induction for certain objects? Do we not see that it is in all nature, as in the example of the monkey, who has attention sufficient for filling his pouches with fruits, but knows not how to keep up a fire? Education perfects, deteriorates, represses, and directs the Innate Faculties, but can neither destroy nor produce any. Since we have ventured to regard animals no longer as mere machines, many philosophers maintain, that not only man, but animals also, are born without instincts, propensities, primitive determination, faculties; that they are indifferent, equally susceptible of every thing; and, finally, that we must regard them as tabulæ rasæ. Their ingenious aptitudes, instincts, propensities and faculties, it is pretended, are the result of accidental impressions, received by the five senses, or of those which education gives them. Even insects, say they, display their natural aptitudes only as an effect of instruction. The builder-wasp has already learned, while yet a larva, the masonry of his mother; the bird learns from those who have given him life, to build his nest, to sing, to migrate; the young fox is carried to school by his father; and man would not become man, would remain a savage and idiot, without the means furnished by education. Let us first examine this hypothesis, so far as it concerns animals. It is true, and I shall give numerous proofs of it in this work, that the great part of animals are not limited wholly to the means of their own preservation. They are susceptible of much more extended instruction, than their immediate wants require. We teach all sorts of tricks to birds, squirrels, cats, dogs, horses, monkeys, and even swine. They also modify their own mode of action with reference to the position in which they find themselves. But, this faculty of receiving education is always proportionate to their primitive faculties; and they cannot, any more than man, learn things, of which they have not received the first impress from nature. I admire the setter, couching in the pursuit of the pheasant; the falcon in chase of the heron; but the ox will never learn to run after mice nor the cat to browse on grass; and we shall never teach the roe-buck and the pigeon to hunt. If animals were susceptible of impressions from all that surrounds them, in a manner to derive lessons from them to the degree supposed, why does not the chicken learn to coo with the pigeons? Why does not the female nightingale imitate the song of her mate? How does each animal, notwithstanding the intercourse of other species, differing the most from his own, preserve his peculiar manners? Why do birds and mammifera, even when hatched or suckled by strange parents, always manifest the character of their species? Why does the cuckoo imitate neither, the nest where he is hatched, nor the note of the bird who has reared him? How do we teach the squirrel which we have taken blind in his nest, and who has never seen another squirrel, to climb and leap from one branch to another? How do we inspire the ferret with the instinct of seeking the rabbit in his burrow? Who has taught ducks and beetles to counterfeit death, as soon as they are menaced by an enemy? Who has given lessons to the spider, which, hardly escaped from his egg, weaves a web and envelopes the captive flies, that they may not dry up? Of whom has the ichneumon fly learned to attach with a thread to the branch of a tree, the caterpillar, in which have car coil with cating she has deposited her eggs? And how do the caterpillars, as soon as they are hatched, roll themselves in a leaf to escape the cold and dampness of the winter? In fine, why do animals do things, which they have never seen done; and why do they almost always do them as well the first time, as their progenitors? Without the innateness of the faculties of animals, how can we explain the differences of individuals, which have absolutely the same manner of living? When, in a forest, one nightingale sings better and more assiduously than the rest; when in a poultry yard one cock is more ardent in fight, and another more pacific; when one hen, one cow, are better mothers than the other hens and the other cows, can we attribute these phenomena to education? How can we comprehend why certain individuals are raised above their fellows, and become, as it were, the geniuses of their species? Locke's translator, Coste, speaks of a dog, who, in winter, whenever his comrades were lying about the fire, so as to prevent his approach, set himself about making a noise in the court; and while his comrades ran thither, he hastened to enter into the house, took a good place near the fire, and let those bark whom he had cheated by this stratagem. He had frequent recourse to it, and yet he always gained his ends, because no one of the other dogs had sagacity enough to discover his trick. Dupont de Nemours had a cow, that, to procure the whole flock a more abundant supply of food, adopted the plan of throwing down with her horns, the fence with which the field was surrounded. None of the other cows knew how to imitate her example; and when they were near the fence, waited impatiently the arrival of their conductress. I have sometimes met mocking-birds who perfectly imitated the birds of the neighborhood, even to the quail and the cuckoo, while the others surrounded by the same birds, could only imitate a small number, or were limited to their own peculiar song. In fine, if the instincts, propensities, and faculties of animals, are not determined by their organization, how can you explain the fact, that these instincts, propensities and faculties are always found in harmony with their external organs? What chance should give to each animal, factitious instincts, faculties, always in harmony with their teeth, claws, horns, &c.? Will you maintain that nature acts without object, in giving to the beaver strong gnawing teeth and a flat tail; to the intelligent elephant his trunk; to the sanguinary tiger his terrible claws and teeth? Or, will you tell me, with those who do not acknowledge final causes, that the bear, the tiger, and the elephant employ their instruments for the sole reason, that they find them fitted for certain purposes? the mole lives under ground because her eyes are too small; the feet of the swan are natural oars, and therefore he chooses of necessity his abode in the water. Neither man nor animals have any limb, any instrument, in order to use it, but they use them because they have them. Who does not see that, on this supposition, there would be no connection between the interior and exterior, between the instruments and the active force? And would you forget, that the boar strikes with his jaws before his tusks are formed? the young bull and the kid with their head, before their horns have appeared? that the bird shakes his wings before he has any feathers? Take from the lion his teeth and claws, and give them to the sheep, and see if by this means you will change the lion into a sheep, and the sheep into a lion. We must then admit, that each animal, in consequence of its organization, has received from nature ingenious aptitudes, instincts, propensities, proper determinate talents, and that the power of things external, of instruction and education, is limited to giving it more or less modification. The hypothesis of the tabula rasa, and of the creative power of education, is it more admissible for the human race? To attempt to write in a satisfactory manner on the influence of institutions and of education, would be undertaking volumes. I must therefore confine myself to my object, and show, by some general considerations, how far the influence of human efforts extends over the moral and intellectual character of man. The antagonists of innate dispositions persist in saying, that man, being from his birth surrounded by men, appropriates to himself their faculties and their charac ter. Might I not ask whence the first men, who were surrounded only by beasts, obtained their faculties, and how they created or invented them? Even at the present time, are not many men, in their infancy, more surrounded by animals than by men? Why do not these children receive the instincts and propensities of animals as well as the faculties of man? If children had not the same dispositions as their parents and instructors, how could they be capable of receiving their instruction and profiting by their example? In the first years, when children are almost solely in the hands of their mothers, of nurses, and of women, boys always distinguish themselves from girls, and one child is perfectly distinct from another. After this period nothing can give rise to a resemblance between the faculties of the man and the woman, nor between those of different individuals. In fine, do we know any art by which an ☀ instructor can create in children envy, love, attachment, anger, goodness or wickedness, ambition, pride, &c. ? Do we know how to create any talent? This power so little belongs to man, that even when we are our own absolute masters, we cannot escape the changes which the succession of years produces in our moral and intellectual faculties. Every thing confirms the truth of what Herder says, that education cannot take place except by imitation, and consequently by the passage from the original to the copy. The imitator must have the faculty of receiving what is communicated to him and of transforming it into his nature, as he does the meats is grot a A |