In man, two broad instincts common to all animals, the instinct for
getting food, and the instinct for reproduction, are developed into some
degree of rational insight into nature. The instincts connected with
getting food require that every animal should have some just ideas of
the action of mechanical forces. In man these ideas become abstract and
general. [�] [pg. 27-28]
The instincts connected with reproduction require that every animal
should have some tact and judgment as to how another animal will feel
and act under different circumstances. These ideas likewise take more
abstract forms in man, and enable us to make our initial hypotheses
successfully in the psychical side of science, � in such studies, for
example, as psychology, linguistics, ethnology, history, economics, etc.
It is evident that unless man had some inward light tending to make his
guesses on these subjects much more often true than they would be by
mere chance, the human race would long ago have been extirpated for its
utter incapacity in the struggles for existence; or if some protection
had kept it continually multiplying, the time from the tertiary epoch to
our own would be altogether too short to expect that the human race
could yet have made its first happy guess in any science. The mind of
man has been formed under the action of the laws of nature, and
therefore it is not so very surprising to find that its constitution is
such that, when we can get rid of caprices, idiosyncrasies, and other
perturbations, its thoughts naturally show a tendency to agree with the
laws of nature. [pg. 28 - 30]
