those wonderful and entertaining anecdotes which form the bulk of most treatises on the theme before us. The second instinct, that of Self-defence, is illustrated in the use by various creatures, of those natural weapons with which they are armed in case of assault, as the sting, the talon, and the teeth. The ejection of poison belongs to the same series. The third, the instinct of Propagation, comprises that long, beautiful, and most interesting episode in the history of life which begins with the selection of a mate of complementary sex. The special instinct of pairing, is one of the most admirable in nature. Every species of animal, where the rearing of the young requires the attention of both parents, is subject.to it; all such birds, for example, as build their nests in trees. The young of these birds are hatched blind, and bare of feathers, so that they require the nursing care of both parents till their eyes are opened and they are able to fly; to this end the male feeds his mate as she sits brooding on her eggs, and cheers her with a song. Another of the special instincts belonging to the general one of Propagation, specially deserving notice, is that by which the sexes draw near at such periods of the year as will cause their young to be ushered into the world precisely when their food is most abundant. Though the time of gestation varies so widely in the different species of herbivorous quadrupeds, previous things are so ordained that the young appear early in summer, when grass is plentiful; the lambs and young goats, which are born after a five months' gestation, come with the first steps of spring, because they love short grass, such as a foal or a young cow could scarcely live upon. The young of pairing birds are similarly produced in early summer, when the weather is warm and genial, and they have a long season before them wherein to grow and become vigorous, and able to resist the cold of winter. The fourth and last, Love to offspring, is like Selfpreservation, one of the principal centres of anecdote. The animal world overflows with that beautiful impulse to which we every one of us owe our being; that sweet, unworded passion, only in a weaker form, which induces the mother to hold her offspring whole nights and days in her fond arms, and press it to her bosom with silent gladness. If there be one thought more touching than another, when the roll of half a life-time has either given or denied us a pretty little one of our own, it is that of the patient, yearning, unreckoned hours when we lay unconscious on our mother's bosom. Poor, tedious, wailing, unthankful little animals, she at least cared for us and prized us, and though unsightly and uninteresting to all the world beside, saw in all our little face all the beauty of the angels.

Our first and sweetest nurture, when the wife
Blest into mother, in the innocent look

Or even the piping cry of lips that brook

No pain nor small suspense, a joy perceives

Man knows not, when from out its cradled nook

She sees her little bud put forth its leaves.

The instinct of Plants is similarly played forth in maintenance of the individual and propagation of the species. To these ends plants are endowed with a variety and an elaborateness of curious impulse quite as high, in proportion to their sphere of being, as that which is observable in the Animal Kingdom. Except as objects of nomenclature and classification, plants are so far but little understood; they are passed by as destitute of all that makes animals so interesting; feeling, consciousness, volition, undoubtedly they are short of; their economy is nevertheless so strangely like our own, that it is no wonder a few enthusiasts in every age, as Empedocles among the ancients, and Darwin and Dr. Percival among the moderns, have conceived them susceptible of pleasures and pains, emotions and ideas. It is unnecessary to say how purely fanciful are all such attributes. As with animals, there is in plants, both an inward vitality, and a series of externalized actions, complementing the interior ones, the two together making up the sum of the vegetable economy. Wherever the health and well-being of the individual, or the efficient play of the reproductive forces, may be involved, we find the one grand general principle of Instinct in operation. It is not peculiar to any particular part of the plant; it pertains to the whole, and resides in the whole, operating at every point, according to the exigency. As examples of the externalized instincts of plants may be cited the ingenious methods whereby such as possess stems too weak to stand upright without assistance, manage, nevertheless, to lift themselves into the air. The sweetpea and its congeners, the passion flower, the bryony, the vine, and many others, effect this by converting the extremities of their leaves, or a portion of their flower-stalks, into tendrils, with which they clasp their stouter neighbours, often stretching a long way in order to reach them. The Virginian creeper puts out curious little organs like hands, having a sucker at the end of every finger, by means of which it attaches itself to its prop. Other slender plants are found twining spirally, as the hop, the convolvulus, and the woodbine, each kind. adopting the particular method for which its organization more especially adapts it.

While men neither write books, nor investigate causes, nor cultivate abstract science, by instinct, neither does anything which refers

purely to the corporeal welfare come, except secondarily and indirectly, of Reason. Instinct, belonging to the physiological expression of life, or that which animates organized material forms, has no other end or function than the maintenance of those forms; whence, moreover, it never operates without manifesting its effects in the organic mechanism: Reason, on the other hand, has no relation to the body, except as the soul's lodging and instrument; it belongs to the soul, purely and abidingly, and may be exercised without giving the slightest external token. Instead of framing bodily organs, and originating physical offspring, and inducing the various physical acts on which these two great aims depend for their full effectuation, it spans the sciences, sails deliciously through the heavenly realms of poetic analogy, penetrates the significances of things, and looks into the very mind of God himself. The life whose phenomena are the instincts, impels us only to eat, to drink, to propagate, to preserve our fabric safe and sound; the spiritual life, the phenomena of which are forms of reason, gives power, not to do corporeal things, but to think, and to rise emotionally towards the source of life. It is by reason of this supra-instinctive life that man stands as the universal master. God, in creating a being who can be at once cognizant of his Creator and of himself, appoints him vicegerent over all. Man thinks,' says Buffon, hence he is master over creatures which do not think.' With adaptitude for thinking comes power of spiritual desire. In brutes, that is to say, where the instinctive expression of life is all, there is nothing which reaches further than temporal, terrestrial, purely physical wants; man aspires to spiritual and invisible things; he desires the delights of intelligence, emotion, and imagination; the source and centre of all his desires, however unconsciously it may be to himself, being heavenly and divine. They come of the soul's insatiable and inalienable need of God. This sentiment,' as finely said by Victor Cousin, the need of the Infinite, is the foundation of the greatest passions and the most trifling desires. It is the infinite that we love, while we believe that we are loving finite things. even while we are loving truth, beauty, virtue. And so surely is it the infinite itself that attracts and charms us, that its higher manifestations do not satisfy us till we have referred them to their immortal origin. A sigh of the soul in the presence of the starry heavens, the passions of glory and ambition express it better without doubt, but they do not express it more than those vulgar loves which wander from object to object in a perpetual circle of anxious desires, poignant disquietudes, and mournful disenchantments.' If brutes in any case had spiritual desires (which is tantamount to the possession of reason, seeing that these two faculties

are complementary to one another) they would worship. The feeblest glimmering of reason among the most ignorant and savage of our race, is expressed, without exception, in acknowledgment and adoration of an unseen power, some 'Great Spirit,' before whom they bow themselves, whose favour they seek, and whose frowns they fear and deprecate. No brute thus approaches its Maker, nor is it able. The ox, in its rich pasture, never raises its eyes in gratitude towards heaven; it spends its whole existence in purely material satisfactions, and desires nothing beyond herbage and drink. It is from the same aptitude to think of and to love God that man alone is able to appreciate his transcript in the splendour and sweet beauty of outward nature. However exquisite the organs of sense may be in brutes, 'eyes have they, but they see not; ears have they, but they hear not.' As tersely expressed by the old poet,

νοῦς ὁρᾶ καὶ νους ἀκόνει· τ' ἄλλα κωφά και τυφλά.

'Tis mind alone that sees and hears; all things beside are deaf and blind.

Epicharmus.

This it is, accordingly, the spiritual degree of life, peculiarly characterized by capacity for rising to its source, which distinguishes between man and the brute. Man has the instinctive life, the same as the brute; but he has the spiritual life in addition. He has it by virtue of his possessing a 'spiritual body;' so organized as to receive consciously the divine love and wisdom, and to be able to reflect them back upon their Almighty giver in the shape of admiration of his works, and worship of him as Father and Saviour. This it is which, establishing a distinction between human nature and the very noblest of brute natures, such as no exquisiteness or complexity of mere physical organization can be compared with for a moment, keeps them infinitely more distinct than animal and plant, or even organic and inorganic substance. Though there is one life,-the instinctive, common to all organic things; here is another, the spiritual, peculiarly and unapproachably human, so that though plants may be charming, and animals beautiful, man alone can be sublime. What glorious privileges attend this life! We do not think of it, but everything superior to the mere gratification of bodily appetite and provision for physical wants, comes of our being gifted with a spiritual organism or body, receptive of spiritual life; in fact, it is this very same divine gift which distinguishes man, even in his animal nature, from the brutes. How varied and beautiful, for instance, are the attitudes he can assume! No animal can deport itself as man does, nor can any animal but man move in the graceful undulations of the dance. Embodiments, each one of them, of a single and separate principle,

brutes can do just one thing, concordant with their simplicity; man, as the compend of the world, can do all things. Another striking fact of the same nature is, that while the eyes of animals are always of the same colour in the same species, the human eye, the symbol of human intellect, is of the most beautiful diversity. The only brute in which there is a tendency to variety in this particular, is the horse, which animal, it will be remembered, is in the Word of God, and therefore in nature, the representative of intelligence. Man, for the same reason, is the upright animal. While other creatures have their faces turned earthwise, he is aveρwños,* 'the looker upwards.'

Pronaque cùm spectent animalia cætera terram,

Os homini sublime dedit, cœlumque tueri

Jussit, et erectos ad sidera tollere vultus.

(While other animals bend their looks downwards to earth, He gave to man a lofty countenance, commanded him to lift his face to heaven, and behold with upturned eyes the stars.-Ovid, Met. i. 84–86.)

Lactantius, in reference to these celebrated lines, contends that the erect form of man is so palpably a proof of his being designed to look upwards alone, that whatever tends to attract his attention to merely terrestrial objects, is contrary to his nature.f

SUMMARY OF THE SPIRITUAL SENSE OF THE BOOKS OF GENESIS AND EXODUS, AS DERIVED FROM THE ARCANA CELESTIA.

(Continued from page 32.)

THE BOOK OF GENESIS.
Chap. X.

CONTENTS.-Concerning the Ancient Church and its propagation, ver. 1; that they who maintained external worship corresponding to internal, were the sons of Japhet, ver. 2; that they who maintained external worship more remote from internal, were the sons of Gomer and Javan, to ver. 4; that they who maintained worship still more remote, were the islands of the Gentiles, ver. 5; that they who cultivated knowledges, &c. separated from things internal, were the sons of Ham, ver. 6; that they who cultivated knowledges of spiritual things, were the sons of Cush; and of celestial things, the sons of Raamah, ver. 7. Concerning those who maintained external worship in which were interior evils and falses, who are signified by Nimrod, to ver. 9; the evils in such worship, ver. 10; and the falses, to ver. 12. Concerning those who form * παρὰ τὸ ἄνω αθρειν, according to Plato.

+ Divinarum Institutionum, Lib. 2, cap. 1.