CURIOSITIES OF INSTINCT. through the air to the altar of the sun, " Believed by the people, and blazoned by poetry, and recorded by history, religion also lent its sanction to these fables, while painting and sculpture gave them universal currency. The humbler animals, not sufficiently elevated when placed merely on a level with mortals, were advanced to the dig. nity of internuncios between gods and human beings; they were oracles of the future, and revealed the Divine will. The most momentous affairs, the armies and the colonies of the ancients, were, in all dangerous and foreign expeditions, guided by birds. The dripping fugitives who escaped from the deluge of Deucalion, were guided to safety by a pack of wolves, and, in gratitude, their new city was named Wolftown. Egypt was indebted to the same animal for its safety from Ethiopian invasion. The sites of the most renowned cities were indicated to their founders by quadrupeds or birds, as was specially the case in the instance of Rome, Alba, and Constantinople. The lower animals were the real priests of ancient prophecy, and in the very desirable quality of clearness, the language of the brutes always surpasses that of the oracles. Achilles is told by his horse, without a shadow of ambiguity, that he must die before Troy. In the midst of the Forum, a patriotic ox warns the astonished people, bellows his threats, of the dangers which environ the republic. Ants are seen busily engaged in conveying grains of corn, and placing them in the mouth of the infant Midas, thereby intimating the future opulence of the sleeping boy 66 [Nov., to their elevation over terrestrial things, the great length of their vision, the purity of lives, and their power of ascending into the their aerial element, the innocency of their heavens. The debates in the councils of the gods are audible to birds; indeed augury takes its name from them, augur and augurium being, according to Varro, derived from avium garritus, the chattering of the feathered race. ceremony, negligent of morals and void of As polytheism was altogether a religion of dogma, it consecrated all these dreams, and thus resigned the management of most magnificent empires to the meanest animals. "At Rome the consuls and emperors have much less influence," says Pliny, "than the sacred chickens. The peckings of domestic fowls are contemplated with awe and solicitude. The proceedings of the magistrates are regulated according to the caprices of tite or reluctance to feed, the magistrates these fowl. As the chickens show an appeopen or shut their houses. The legions engage the enemy when the chickens are vivacious; they prognosticate victory, and command the commanders of the world." deities of Olympus applied for information But it was not merely the Romans-the to birds. Jupiter, the master of the universe, out the precise centre of the earth; so he was at one time somewhat puzzled to make engaged two eagles to fly, the one to the east, the other to the west, and proceed constantly forward until they met. obeyed, and the oracle of Delphi being the The eagles spot over which they came together, the ancients believed Delphi to be the umbilical point, the dupaλóc of the earth; and in grateful memory of the meeting of the eagles, They don't wear out their time in sleeping and the Delphians placed two golden images of play, But gather up corn in a sunshiny day, And for winter they lay up their stores: the storms, And so brought their food within doors." Bees clustered round the cradle of the sleeping Plato, alighted on his lips, and intimated that the wisdom, of which bees are an emblem, should one day issue from his eloquent lips. Serpents climb up and lock the infant Roscius in their folds; and, in the great pitched battles of the Roman armies, eagles are seen hovering in the sky, as heralds of victory. Mysteries to which men clearly perspicuous to birds; and this, owing are blind are that bird in the temple of Apollo. Delphi was to Greece what Meath was to Ireland, or the Midhyama of the Hindoos, the Midheim of the Scandinavians, the Cuzco of the Peruvians, and the Palestine of the Hebrews. To place animals in temples and solfor Polytheism. It raised them to Olympus, emnly consecrate them was not enough where it associated them with gods. The eagle, bearing thunderbolts in its pounces, and of the vengeance of Jupiter. Standing was alike the instrument of the pleasures by his throne, it was ever ready to sweep forward with the message of wrath or the pledges of his affection. Polytheism twisted serpents round the caduceus of Mercury, the horses of Olympus with ambrosia, enplaced an owl on the helm of Minerva, fed dowed them with immortality, and extolled | remedy. To human investigation the intelthem as more rapid than the very gods. It was not enough for Polytheism, which a father of the Church terms "the madness of mankind," to blend brutes indiscriminately with deities; it raised them from the humility of associates to the dignity of gods themselves. Thus Rome instituted the worship of the locust, and celebrated its festival on the eighth of the kalends of December, the object being to prevail on those creatures to forbear destroying the harvests of Italy. Fetishism seemed pushed to its utmost extravagance by the Babylonians and Canaanites, but Egypt really perfected the superstition. The animal kingdom furnished the country of the sphynx with nearly all its re. ligious emblems. Birds, quadrupeds, and reptiles swarmed in its temples, and were deified by its priests. Not satisfied with this, Egyptian imagination furnished the devotees of Egypt with what may be termed "monster-gods." It dignified or degraded Anubis with the head of a dog, and set off Isis with the head of a cow, while Osiris was made to look cunning and ridiculous with the head of a hawk. Jupiter Ammon looks foolish through the head of a ram, and Saturn grins portentously with the long snout of a crocodile. Paganism built temples to house quadrupeds, and hollowed ponds for the evolutions of the finny divinities. At Melita a serpent lay coiled within a tower erected exclusively for its preservation, while trains of priests and servants were seen every day proceeding to lay flowers and honey on the altar of this reptile. The countless multitudes of Egypt sadden at once into the deepest mourning at that (to them) appalling event-the death of a dog, a cat, an ibis, or a jackal. The mourning nation embalms them with pious solicitude, weeps over their inanimate forms, conveys them with solemn pomp into the sepulchres of royalty, and tenderly places them beside the "buried majesty" of Egypt. The insanity of Egypt having deified the brutes, went a step farther-an awful step: men pale and trembling in ligatures were dragged to their shrines and solemnly murdered before the unintelligent eyes of these "monster gods," fully justifying the remark of the Stagyrite, man is in many instances more stupid and meaner than the beasts." Oh! how vile must man be," exclaims Pascal, "when he subjects himself to quadrupeds, and adores brutes as deities!" The vileness which Pascal laments, originates in an ignorance which he could not lect of brutes presents the most puzzling enigma in the visible creation, and what man cannot understand, he naturally, if not inevitably, reverences. Man, unenlightened by revelation, could not answer the query of the poet "Who taught the nations of the field and flood fore? Who calls the council states the certain day? Who forms the phalanx and who points the way ?" The question was first clearly stated by Montaigne and Pereira, philosophers who laid the foundation of the two distinct schools which divide the philosophic world at this moment into hostile camps. One of these schools, which may easily trace its origin to Pereira, refuses intelligence, or even feeling, to lower animals, while feeling, and intelli-. gence, and even soul, are conceded to the brutes by the disciples of Montaigne. The foremost champions of the spirituality of the human soul may be found among those who make the souls of brutes material; while, on the other hand, those philosophers who are most liberal in endowing brutes with spiritual intelligences, are very niggardly and stingy in allowing men any souls at all. Brutes are considered by Pereira as insensible puppets, which some veiled hand jerks this way and that; and though they utter cries of joy or sorrow, without being sensible of either sorrow or joy; and though they eat they are not hungry, though they drink they are not thirsty. According to these philosophers, animals do not act from anything resembling human knowledge, but solely from the disposition of their organs. Descartes admits, what it would be very difficult to deny, that brutes possess life; but while he allows them feeling he refuses them intelligence. He illustrates his argument by comparing brutes to watches, which though made exclusively of insensible machinery, wheels and springs, can, nevertheless, count minutes and measure time more accurately than men. "The Being who made them," says Malebranche, "in order to preserve them, endowed brutes with an organization which mechanically avoids destru tion and danger; but in reality they fear nothing and desire nothing." The au tomatism of animals was the fashionable phi- | and, accordingly, these attributes are freely losophy of the Cartesians and Jansenists, and given them by the naturalist Bonnet. was at one time all the rage in France. During the last century a swarm of books was published on the subject, which instead of elucidating the matter, only rendered it more obscure. The most unfeigned aston ishment is expressed by many of these writers at the marvels of instinct, but these are the very writers who are most emphatic in declaring animals mere machines. men. The followers of Descartes, who maintained that the animals were inferior to machines, were opposed by the followers of Pereira, who maintained that they were superior to The animals are endowed by these philosophers with freewill and foresight; the brutes speak, laugh, and reflect as we do. Leibnitz, after carefully balancing the attributes of men and brutes, hesitates to admit the superiority of our species. He declares that some men, and no doubt himself among the number, are decidedly superior to brutes, while the difference between certain stupid men and certain intelligent quadrupeds is so small, that he doubts if any difference really exists, or admitting its existence, that the advantage is on the human side. He argues for the immortality of the souls of brutes, and "Thinks, admitted to an equal sky, His faithful dog shall bear him company." But brutes must be gifted with conscience, knowledge, and responsibility before they can be admitted to the dignity of another life; Cuvier, Buffon, Locke, and Voltaire, and all the writers who have endeavored to penetrate the mystery of existence through the medium of metaphysical inquiry, or the study of animal organization, have devoted meditation and investigation to what some term the intellect, and some the automatism, of the lower animals. Their contradictions are innumerable. But the medium between the preposterous extravagance of refusing sensation to the very organs of the senses, and the no less ridiculous theory which lodges an immortal spirit in a flea, is to be found in what is termed instinct. But what is instinct?" asks Voltaire. "It is a 'substantial power,' it is a 'plastic energy." C'est je ne sais quoi, c'est de l'instinct. The nature of instinct has been often canvassed subsequently to this writer, but the discussion has invariably terminated in some unsatisfactory definition, proving the invincible ignorance of man on this subject, and that— "Well hast thou said, Athena's wisest son, All that we know is, little can be known." It is one of those mysteries the solution of which is concealed in the mind of the Godhead. The unaided intellect of man will never pierce it. "What is the mighty breath, ye sages say, That in a powerful language, felt, not heard, THE LATEST FASHIONS.-The fashion of | traordinary efforts, but the whalebone of the dresses of extreme breadth has spread from Paris to the French provinces. The Courrier de l'Eure mentions an unfortunate occurrence, occasioned the other day by the costume. A lady, it seems, presented herself at the confessional of the cathedral; but presenting herself was not all that was to be done; it was necessary to enter the narrow space reserved for the penitent, and to reach the grating which divides him or her from the priest. To do this the dress submitted to ex under-dress was obstinate, and, compressed on one side, the balloon swelled out on the other. The dress persisted in its resistance, a silent resistance, scarcely betrayed by the rustling of the silk and the little movements of half-stifled impatience. At last the worldly toilette got the better of the aspirations of piety. Reddened by confusion, the penitent quitted the spot and left the church. Was it to change her costume? THERE is a well-known and often-quoted | and they have all made a deep impression passage of Jeffrey's, in which he takes stock upon modern habits of thought and of writing. roughly of our accumulating literature, and Yet three of the four have lived to see the speculates upon the judicious economy which tide turn, to have arithmetically-minded an exasperated posterity will have to exer- critics count over the bay-leaves in their cise, in selecting its intellectual food. He crowns and "One or two too many!" say supposes that our children at the --th remove Thackeray is at this moment at perihelion, may have been reduced to the necessity of and has been praised by implication, if not submitting our favorites to a process of dis- openly, at the expense of dear Charles Dicktillation, and bottling off the essence for use. ens-too often, we happen to think. CarHe imagines a library of fractional parts of lyle and Macaulay bave both learned of late, standard poets-just as if some Charles in company with Russell and Palmerston, Knight of A.D. 2000, should publish "Two that minutes and a half (a-piece) with the best Authors!" Jeffrey was wrong. The reading-power of the race beats the producing power by "long chalks;" and though every five years or so has its literary fashion, the soul of the world is just, and what is good, however forgotten for a time, is not dead but sleepeth. Fret not thyself therefore because an evildoer like Dobbs is lord of the ascendant for his little puppy-dog's day; neither be thou envious because Snobbs has -a third edition in the press. Is not the "Omnipresence of Stupidity," by Robertulus Mountflummery, in his twentyeighth, and "Proverbial Verbosity," by Barking Fupper, in its eighteenth edition, besides being published gorgeously illustrated, and also "for the use of Schools ?" Is it not so? We believe it is. Yet are we prepared to depone before any magistrate in a "solemn and sincere Declaration by virtue of the provisions of an Act intituled an Act to repeal an Act, &c., &c., for the better prevention of extra-judicial oaths and affidavits," that we have read Shakspeare within the week! The four names which, in the eye of that vague and respectable individual, the "General Reader," stand for the literature of our own day, are Carlyle, Macaulay, Dickens, Thackeray. They have all had the largest, most intelligent, most appreciative audiences that ever men of letters were favored with, VOL. XXXVI.—NO. III The presence of perpetual change Is ever on the earth, and also in the periodicals and newspapers. But it is a vulgar error to suppose that they smash chimney ornaments, or refuse reasonable sustenance, when an unfavorable allusion is made to their writings in the public prints. They are wiser and better men for it, and show it to any friend who may happen to be present, after which they both laugh consumedly and talk of things in general. This statement is authorized, and contradiction is defied. If the living on this side of the Styx take matters so coolly, it is not to be supposed that the literary population of Hades complain among themselves of posthumous neglect and misappreciation. But we think the readers of the writers of the eighteenth century might show good cause for complaint. It is the fashion just now to revile the eighteenth century, and glorify exceedingly the Elizabethan and Cromwellian times. Well, the eighteenth century was bad enough, we dare say, but perhaps no worse than its neighbors, one of whom happens to be the nineteenth. That will come in for its turn of abuse and misrepresentation by-and-bye, and critics like those who now cry "miserable expediency" and "desolating negations" when the previous century is mentioned, will then plant thorns and thistles on the grave of this, saying, "Shoddy and Veneer, Chico 59 ry and Representative Institutions - thank | incisive logic, and of pellucid English, that Heaven, we ain't our grandfathers!" We maintain that the eighteenth century was a respectable century, and produced some decent fellows one of whom was WILLIAM PALEY, of the good-humored nose and eyes, and the cocked-hat, and the everlasting fishing rod; who wrote some of the most useful of books; and missed a bishopric because he wrote a paragraph about pigeons. Of him we propose to discourse a little. We have written thus far playfully; but we mean what we have written in all seri ousness. The popular tendency to depreciate the eighteenth century is about as intelligent and informed as the popular admiration of Carlyle-that is, it is altogether superficial and parrot-like. The great crowd of Mr. Carlyle's admirers have never penetrated beneath the surface of his writings, never got beyond his marvellously powerful and stirring style. If they knew his real "doctrine," they would turn and rend him. The safety of a prophet such as he is in poetry and enigma. Propound his ideas in the strict logical form to the million who swear by him, and make wide their phylacteries of his dark sayings, and you will be voted an idiot, or, what is worse, a subversive scoundrel. We say this is no spirit of exaggeration, and assert that the mass of "respectable" and "intelligent" depreciators of Paley knew as much about his writings as the admirers of Carlyle know of his. How many of the readers of this paper are aware what Paley's moralsystem really was, or understand his doctrine of "general consequences ?" "Oh," says one," Paley's doctrine was that of expediency -every schoolboy knows that !" And opening the Philosophy, he lays his finger upon that obnoxious word, and dismisses the subject with about as much knowledge of it as the little girl had of Presbyterianism when she took the centipede in the garden for a votary of that faith. Over and over again are we asked, when poor Paley is found on our reading-stand, why we read him? "Who reads Paley now-o'-days? Eighteenth Century Selfish school of Morals-Bundle him off with Locke, Condillac, Hartley, Priestly, and the whole list of Sensualist Philosophers." But the fact is we cannot afford to bundle him off. We say nothing now of the fact that the Catholic reader is the only reader who knows his business. But we do say, we find in Paley such a treasury of shrewd observation, of quiet humor, of clear, we must decline relegating him to the lumber-room. These are the days of dogmatism, of "utterances ;" and in the midst of the heartiest enjoyment of writers like John Ruskin, Francis Newman, Charles Kingsley, and Frederick Denison Maurice, we sometimes cry out, like the Scotchmen, who languished for "one hour of Dundee," Oh for five minutes of the Syllogism! Commend us even to BARBARA,— Barbara, Celarent, Darii, Ferio, quoque prima, Cæsare, Camestres, Festino, Baroco and all the rest of it, by way of respite from this eternal dictation! Then Butler and Paminds in common gratitude to write a Raid ley come to our rescue, and we make up our about them or one of them. Let us say a little about Paley, as well as about his works. It has been observed-we remember see ing the thing very boldly and forcibly put in a leader in the Examiner some years agothat no profession furnishes so large a quota of shameful offenders against social propriety as the clerical. Certainly it seems to us no profession has furnished so many wits and bon-vivants. Said Luther, Who loves not Woman, Wine, and Song, and his teaching has been pretty generally followed by Protestant clergymen, at least as far as wine is concerned. We have always found these gentlemen the most delicate of connoisseurs in all that comes from the grape; and one of the most vivid images in the halls of our memory is that of a gray-headed old rector flaming up with indignation at the loss of a small case of Lachrymæ Christi, which everybody but himself had forgotten-it had lain fifteen years in a cellar, and was at last smothered in the rubbish of some demolished houses in the city. The old gentleman, of whom no one had heard for years, suddenly turned up, making affectionate inquiries after his half-dozen of the "warm south;" and highly spiced, though somewhat unsanctified, was the oration in which he proceeded to denounce Metropolitan Improvements as soon as he found his treasure buried, with a handsome suite of offices over it by way of mausoleum. Let some one "write a book," scilicet, a Biographical Gallery of Funny Clergymen, who have known-(Vixere knowing fellows ante Thomas Binney)-"how to make the best of both worlds." Let us |