signified the Divine Truth of the Word, the dragon resolved to destroy it, but a refuge of safety was found in the wilderness. Thus the persecution of Herod, as one of the facts attending the Lord's nativity into the world, is full of important instruction, and has solemn claims upon our attention. When the Truth of the Lord's coming is announced to deliver and save us from our sins, do we not often, like Pharaoh, Herod, or the dragon, persecute that Truth, and, by the activity of inbred corruption, endeavour to destroy its efficacy upon our souls? Does it not then seek its refuge in the most external region of our minds, where it is concealed amongst the mere "scientifics" of the memory signified by the "bullrushes," and also by the "wilderness" and by "Egypt"? Here the young child is preserved until "they are dead who sought its life." It now comes forth and dwells in Nazareth, where it gradually acquires the power signified by the Nazariteship, to overcome the evils of the natural degree, and to prepare the way for its reception into the interior or spiritual mind, thus fulfilling the divine prophecy which, in its practical sense, also relates to the reception of the Truth by man-" Out of Egypt have I called my Son."

SCRUTATOR.

ON INSTINCT, REASON, AND THE THREE DEGREES OF LIFE.

In the forms, properties, and discrete distinctiveness of the three great kingdoms of objective nature lies the groundwork of the whole philosophy of Life and Mind. Here are represented and expounded the threefold expression of the Divine life, the threefold composition of the human soul, and all those other sublime trilogies of the universe which teach the unity of HIM who by wisdom framed the worlds. When, therefore, we would study life, when we would study metaphysics, psychology, or any of the profound and spacious themes which deal with facts not obvious to the senses, our best and shortest way is to begin with studying Natural History, or the science of minerals, vegetables, and animals, their forms, relations, uses, and correspondences. The representation of the human soul in the three kingdoms of nature is most wonderful. It is announced in the very structure of the body, which is the soul's material duplicate, the man over again in flesh and blood, and itself an epitome of the world. The abdominal region, the seat of the meanest and grossest of the corporeal functions, and the lowest part of the body proper, is our mineral kingdom; the chest,

with its leafy lungs, and life-giving heart, the source of aliment to every member, is our vegetable kingdom; the head, with its beautifullymoving face, and restless brain, supported by the chest, as the chest by the inferior parts, is to the remainder of our fabric what animals are to vegetation and the soil. With these three portions of the body correspond, in turn, the three great factors of our humanity, the Sensuous life, the Rational, and the Religious,-forms of activity which have each of them their distinct place and special province in the soul's economy, as minerals, plants and animals have theirs in the economy of the world. The sensuous life is the mineral degree of human nature; the rational life is the vegetable degree; the religious life is the animal. The first, like the solid earth on which we stand, supplies the others with a footing; the rational life is that pleasant green sward of our existence to which belong the innumerable little thoughts and emotions of daily life, amiable and intelligent, worthy and beautiful, but still only secular and temporal; the life of religion is that which lifting us into the sphere of the heavenly and immortal, crowns and consummates the others, as animals complete the glory of God's creation. Wanting either of these three lives, human nature would be imperfect, nor could we exist without any one of them for a single instant; for though man may refuse to exercise the life of religion the power to do so still flows into him from God, and is an integral part of his vitality as a human being. Neglecting the privileges of the two higher lives, man degrades himself into the condition of a mere globe of dead earth and water; caring only for the sensuous life and the rational, he is a mere world of trees and plants, useless because there is no animal to feed on them,

Between these three lives there are discrete degrees as decided as those of material nature. There is no continuity between them, any more than between mineral and plant, or between plant and animal; each preserves, as in material things, its own plane of beginning and of end. Hence the impossibility of a man ever becoming rational who attends only to the pleasures of external sense; or religious by the mere culture of intelligence and morality. It is no more possible than to procure flowers by sowing crystals, or birds by planting acorns. What introduces the soul to heaven is not the power of intellect, nor yet the power of moral discipline, but the power of God,-power distinct from us, and coming down into us. But though severed by discrete degrees, the three lives are intimately bound together, the highest mediately beholden to the lowest. All, moreover, are good, and excellent in their degree, because every one of them has its own

dignifying duty. The religious life is intended to minister to our Maker; the rational to the religious; the sensuous to the rational; each lower life thus, eventually, to ends of piety and the praise of God. There is no greater mistake than to contemn or disparage the sensuous basis of our nature. Whatever is subservient to delight of sense, is conducive, while used temperately, to the best interests of humanity. The perfection of a Christian character does not consist in ignoring and despising the sensuous, which at no time can it practically dispense with, but in honouring all things in their proper places and degrees, rejecting none, but regenerating all. Educators have much to learn in respect of this. How foolish, for example, the doctrine which would persuade a girl that beauty is valueless, and dress only vanity. It is false altogether. Beauty is of value; so is dress, and of great value. The thing to teach is their just value;-that there must be something beneath the dress, and interior to the beauty, better than the silk and the rosy cheek, and without which they are truly no more than rags and ugliness. So with the rational life. If it be foolish to despise the sensuous, a thousand times more foolish is that disesteem of the secular which is often thought so helpful to true piety. The Bible requires the abasement of nothing on the part of man beyond his preposterous selfishness and pride. It is worthy of note that the most exquisite productions of Art are precisely those which approximate to the representation of spiritual, intellectual, and sensuous beauty in a single subject.

The brilliant instruction we derive from considering the great kingdoms of nature as a trilogy answering to the threefold expression of the DIVINE LIFE, is most largely realized when we turn our minds to the contemplation of Instinct and Reason. A true idea of these forces is not possible until that instruction be listened to and applied. The threefold expression adverted to, as shewn above, (p. 11.) is that of Life as it appears in the unorganized part of nature; Life as it is in plants and animals; and Life as it is in the soul. There is no difference in the life itself; that which makes it seem to be different is solely the unlikeness of the receptacles, and their diverse capacity of reception. Each of these expressions of life is characterized by its peculiar phenomena. Those of the lowest expression, or the life of inorganic nature, are the phenomena which Chemistry and Physics attend to; the phenomena of the physiological expression are the Instincts; the phenomena of the spiritual life are Reason.' In other words, instinct is identified with the organic expression of life; reason with the spiritual; the first is concurrent with the temporal and terrestrial part of [Enl. Series.-No. 26, vol. iii.]

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animate nature; the second with the immortal and celestial. Each degree of life prefigures the next above; chemical phenomena prefigure instinct; and instinct beautifully prefigures reason; but like minerals, plants and animals, which are their pictures, they are altogether and eternally distinct, because between each there is the barrier of a discrete degree. Never, therefore, was there a greater mistake than that of Helvetius, Condillac, Smellie, and those other authors who contend that reason is no more than the maximum development of instinct; in plain English, that 'reason' means more instinct,' and 'instinct' 'less reason.' This is virtually to deny that there is any difference between man and brute, and thus to pronounce both of them imperfect. The doctrine arose, without doubt, from the false notion of a continuous chain of being.

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Instinct, accordingly, in its true idea, holds a much larger signification than the performance of certain ingenious works, cognizable by our senses. It does not consist simply in such actions and trains of action as books on the subject of instinct ordinarily confine themselves to; the nest-building of birds, for example, and the hunting, by the new-born infant, for the mother's breast. For technical purposes, it may be useful so to restrict the term, but viewed philosophically, instinct is co-ordinate and co-extensive with life itself. The actions commonly called instinctive are exhibitions in a wider form, of the very same formative energy which previously moulds the various organs of the body, and maintains them in their functional activity. This is strikingly illustrated in the operation of the constructive' instincts, such as impel to the fabrication of coverings, clothing, and the various kinds of dwellings, all of which are a kind of ultimated and externalized organization. God is the organizing framer and preserver of the world of living things; instinct is the method by which his energy takes effect. It is the general faculty of the entire liying fabric, underlying and determining all activities which transpire, either invisibly in the organs themselves, or as played forth to observation; thus bearing exactly the same relation to the general structure which the constructive chemical forces bear to the crystal. In short, instinct is the operation of LIFE, whether promoting the health, the preservation, or the reproduction of an organized frame, or any part of such frame, and whether animal or vegetable. The law of instinct,' as Mason Good well puts it, is the law of the living principle; instinctive actions are the actions of the living principle, pervading and regulating organized matter as gravitation pervades and regulates unorganized matter, and uniformly operating, by definite means, to the general

welfare of the individual system, or its separate organs, advancing them to perfection, preserving them in it, or laying a foundation for their reproduction, as the nature of the case may require. It applies equally to plants and to animals, and to every part of the plant. as well as to every part of the animal, so long as such part continues alive.*

The essential unity of the two classes of instinct-phenomena is best apprehended by comparing their ends and objects, which are in every point alike; whether we take the operations of simple 'vitality,' so called, or those of palpable, externalized instinct,' in the popular sense of the word,—all have reference either to the temporal welfare of the individual, or to the continuance of the species. Self-maintenance and propagation of the kind, are the sole purposes for which the mediate or physiological expression of life is communicated by the Almighty to his creatures. From the first moment of their existence, plant and animal alike, are actively employed in building up organs, repairing waste, and keeping the whole system in lusty health, unless hindered by extraneous obstacles. A portion of their vital energy is simultaneously directed to such activities with regard to surrounding objects, as shall complement those transpiring within the fabric. No new principle is employed in the effectuation of the outward instincts; they are the application of the one common law and method of life to the furtherance of the same common designs, only on a grander scale, and hence with organs often specially provided. The two kinds of phenomena taken together, form the system of vital economy by which the organism and the species alike endure. Doubtless, man may train and turn the usages of instinct to a different purpose, but wherever it is undisturbed by the influence of human reason, the predetermination is essentially to one or other of the two offices that have been mentioned. The particular phenomena of Instinct are referable to four great classes; namely, the instinct of Self-preservation, the instinct of Self-defence, the instinct of Propagation, and the instinct of Love to offspring. It would be easy to shew how these operate in the very inmost economy of organic life, but it will suffice here to speak of them as ultimated into 'instinct,' popularly so termed. The first is that which leads every living creature to seek and consume food, to sleep and otherwise cherish itself, also to construct dwellings and traps for the capture of prey, and to migrate to milder latitudes during the winter. To this instinct, it may be added, belong the greater part of

* Book of Nature, Series 2, Lecture iv.