because such breach is sin. Our moral faculties are permitted to range in a wide field; but evil is the result of a disruption of the rules of action. It is the flaming sword elevated to guard our good, showing us the awful truth, the mere bad habit in the parent may become a constitutional inherent quality in the off spring. We do not suppose these influences always very perceptibly immediate. Many generations are doubtless often required in the full development of an upward movement to a higher order of moral perception; and so in the opposite. Yet we cannot forbear to notice how often the immediate descendant is quite apt to prove its parentage. Will the theologian object-"You contradict the Scripture. You make five species of man. Whereas they are all the descendants of Noah." Have we not shown ample ground and time for their formation from his stock? Besides, we expect hereafter to prove by Scripture that Ham took a wife from the degenerate race of Cain; which, if so, would alone place his descendants in the attitude of inferiority and subjection. No! but we advertise the theologian that we shall take the Scripture for our platform. We believe it, and hope to even hold him close to it. But we now ask for the reflection of all, does not the degenerate man, degraded in constitution below the possibility of his emerging from the depth to which he has sunk, by any self-renovating power, still lingering about his reduced condition, require the aid of one of superior nature, of superior organization and mental development, to act as his adviser, protector, and master? Would not such a provision be a merciful one? And may we not also inquire, whether the superior endowments here required do not also require to be exercised in bearing rule over the wayward energies of those more degenerate, as a necessary element in the school to a higher advance? And shall we not perceive that such a relation must produce a vast amount of improvement and happiness to both? Children and inferior persons often show themselves, upon the slightest temptation, false and cruel,-often the inheritance of parental imperfection. Absolute command, sustained by physical force, has alone been found sufficient to eradicate these old, and to found new habits of truthfulness and humanity. True, the Scripture asserts that all men are equal in the sight of God, just as a father feels an equal parental regard for all his children. The philosophic mind cannot well conceive otherwise than that God feels an equal regard for all parts of his creation; for "The glory of the Lord shall endure for ever: the Lord shall rejoice in his work." But this view reaches not the physical fact; for the father hesitates not to place a guardian over his wayward child, or disinherit the utterly worthless. So God "turneth man to destruction; and sayeth, Return, ye children of men." And how gladly would the parent provide the fatted calf for the worthless son upon his return to honour and virtue! So there is more joy in heaven over the return of one sinner than over ninety-nine who have not gone astray. The mercy of God shines upon the world in floods of celestial light; for Christianity, in its passports to heaven, judges all men by their own acts. Therefore, the most degraded nature, upon a sight of its deformity, may feel an unchangeable regret, and inherit its portion. Here Christianity itself points the way to progressive improvement, and commands children to obey their parents, wives their husbands, and servants their masters. The grace of God is as openly manifested in the welfare of the child or slave, when produced through the interposition of the parent or master, as if the interposition had been more immediate. LESSON IV. INTELLECT is not found to exist only in connection with a corresponding physical organization. In the family of man, if that which may appear a good organization is accompanied by an inferior intellect, we may suspect our nice accuracy of discernment, rather than a discrepancy in the operation of the general law; so also where we may seem to perceive a good intellect, but which produces inferior or unworthy results. We do not always notice the small steps of degeneration. Often the first notice we take is of the fact of a changed condition, as proved by the results: "By their fruits ye shall know them." The idea that intellect and mental development can be independent of physical organization is an absurdity. A suppressed or incomplete organization must arrest a further enlargement of the mental faculties. These faculties may be improved, brought into action, or even their action to some extent suppressed, by government and culture. Such indeed are the guides to progressive improvement. EXPLANATION:-Man has no organization by which he could build a honey-comb like a bee. Will any culture applied to him teach him? Man has no organization by which he can closely examine spiritual existences: his ideas about them are therefore variant and confused. Who will arrange their study into a science? Man has no organization by which he can fully comprehend God. Will he ever do so in his present state? Are, then, the actions of the child, and of those persons whose mental development has been arrested at a very early stage, (as has been supposed the case with the lower orders of animals, and of those animals themselves,) the result of some faculty or mental power different from mind? The result of instinct? And what is instinct but mind in the early dawn of its development? Are not such actions as the chick breaking its shell, the young-born infant receiving its natural food, the necessary consequents of the state of their infantile organization, which the earliest development of mind could prompt and enable them to put forth; and will it be deemed beyond the reach of reason, to prove that with the difference of maturity in organization and development, the same general connection of mind and organization is found, through the entire of life as well as infancy? Philosophers have, with indefatigable labour, endeavoured to enlighten the world on the subject of instinct. Can we be pardoned if we suggest that their theories on this subject signally prove they were but men? Des Cartes says "Brutes are machines without sensation or ideas; that their actions are the result of external force, as the sound of an organ is the result of the air being forced through the pipes." This is his "instinct." If this be true, then it follows that every action in the material world is instinct. Then the thunder utters its voice, the earth quakes, and the telegraph works by "instinct." Yet, his theory has found an advocate in that very classical Latin poem, "Anti Lucretius," by Cardinal Polignac. Dr. Reid sustains the mechanical nature of brutes, but classifies their actions into those of habit and those of instinct. Dr. Darwin says that instinct is mental, and that the actions of brutes result from faculties, the same in nature as those of man, but extremely limited. Smellie takes the same view. Yet Darwin asserts that instinct is the reason; and Smellie, that reason is the result of instinct. Cudworth says that instinct is an intermediate power, taking rank between mind and matter, yet often vibrating from one to the other. Buffon contends that brutes possess an intellectual principle, by which they distinguish between pleasure and pain, and desire the one and repel the other. This is his instinct. Reimar divides instinct into three classes: mechanical, such as the pulsation of the heart; representative, such as result from an imperfect kind of memory, and, so far as it is memory, in common with mankind; and spontaneous, the same as Buffon's. Cuvier says that instinct consists of ideas that do not result from sensation, but flow directly from the brain! Dupont says that there is no such distinct faculty as instinct. His views are analogous to Darwin and Smellie. Pope, Stahl, and others say, "It is the divinity that stirs within us." "And reason raise o'er instinct as you can, Cullen, Hoffman, and others say that instinct is the "vis medicatrix naturæ.' ." Dr. John Mason Good says that "instinct is the law of the living principle," that "instinctive actions are the actions of the living principle." If so, instinct is as applicable to vegetables as to animals. Dr. Hancock, in his work on the Physical and Moral Relations of Instinct, has evidently enlarged on the doctrine of Pope and Stahl. He says instinct is the "impulse," "the inspiration of the Holy Spirit;" and, in his own words, "which we can only regard as an emanation of Divine wisdom." He asserts that the lower we descend in the scale of animal organization and mental development, the more active and allpervading over the conduct of the animal is instinct! But, nevertheless, holds that "instinct is in such animals an unconscious intelligence." We much admire why he did not think proper to cast off from the ancients the charge of a puerile idolatry, on the account of their worship of bulls, calves, alligators, snakes, beetles, and bugs, for they must have entertained a somewhat similar notion. But the doctor goes further, and says, that as the lower grades of the animal world have this quality, in which "the Divine energy seems to act with most unimpeded power," so the holiest of men has it also, but consciously and willingly, and it then becomes his ruling principle, "Divine counsellor, his neverfailing help, a light to his feet, and a lantern to his path." (Page 513.) It is quite evident that the doctor's instinct is the same with the "unerring conscience," "the innate principle of light," "the moral sense," "the spiritual power, "the Divine reason, "the internal teaching," "the perfect light of nature," and "the Divine afflatus" of the theologico-abolition speakers and writers of the present day, which, they say, is the gift of God to every This strange error of some of these writers we have already had occasion to notice. But it is to be regretted, for the good credit of religious profession, that they did not acknowledge from whom they borrowed the idea; or, will they at this late day, excuse themselves, and frankly acknowledge they took it, not from Dr. Hancock, or any other modern, but as a deduction from the practices of ancient idolatry? man. Since we have ventured an opinion on the subject of instinct, we trust forgiveness for the introduction of that of others. Our desire is to present such considerations as lead to the conclusion that men are born into the world with different physical and mental aptitudes: in short, that their corporeal and intellectual organizations are not of equal power; or, if some prefer the term, that their instincts are not of equal extent and activity. For substantially, upon a contrary hypothesis, are founded all those beautiful arguments in favour of the entire equality of man. Some whole systems of political justice are founded upon the proposition that there is no innate principle; and one class of philosophers argue that, as there is no innate principle, therefore all men are ushered into the world under the circumstance of perfect equality; consequently, all the inequality afterwards found is the result of usurpation and injustice. Do they forget that organization itself is innate, and that different organizations must direct the way through different paths? But these philosophers still persist that there is no such disparity among the human race whereby the inferiority of one man shall necessarily place him in subjection to another. This doctrine is perhaps confuted by practice better than by argument. Counsellor Quibble saw his client Stultus in the stocks, on which he cries out, "It is contrary to law. The court has no such power. They cannot do it." Nevertheless, Stultus is still in the stocks! But what would it avail, even if all men were born equals? Could |