VI. THE PHILOSOPHY OF BIRDS’ NESTS.

birds with the highest manifestations of human art and science, is totally beside the question. I do not maintain that birds are gifted with reasoning faculties at all approaching in variety and extent to those of man. I simply hold that the phenomena presented by their mode of building their nests, when fairly compared with those exhibited by the great mass of mankind in building their houses, indicate no essential difference in the kind or nature of the mental faculties employed. If instinct means anything, it means the capacity to perform some complex act without teaching or experience. It implies innate ideas of a very definite kind, and, if established, would overthrow Mr. Mill’s sensationalism and all the modern philosophy of experience. That the existence of true instinct may be established in other cases is not impossible, but in the particular instance of birds’ nests, which is usually considered one of its strongholds, I cannot find a particle of evidence to show the existence of anything beyond those lower reasoning and imitative powers, which animals are universally admitted to possess.