appropriate to nourish his tender age; from all this the infant gathers
experience; by degrees the idea of a nipple, of milk, of pleasure,
associate themselves in his brain: every time he sees the nipple, he
seizes it, promptly conveys it to his mouth, and applies it to the use
for which it is designed.

What has been said, will enable us to judge of those prompt and sudden
sentiments, which have been designated _the force of blood_. Those
sentiments of love, which fathers and mothers have for their children--
those feelings of affection, which children, with good inclinations,
bear towards their parents, are by no means _innate sentiments_; they
are nothing more, than the effect of experience, of reflection, of
habit, in souls of sensibility. These sentiments do not even exist in a
great number of human beings. We but too often witness tyrannical
parents, occupied with making enemies of their children, who appear to
have been formed, only to be the victims of their irrational caprices or
their unreasonable desires.

From the instant in which man commences, until that in which he ceases
to exist, he feels--he is moved either agreeably or unpleasantly--he
collects facts--he gathers experience; these produce ideas in his brain,
that are either cheerful or gloomy. Not one individual has all this
experience present to his memory at the same time, it does not ever
represent to him the whole clew at once: it is, however, this experience
that mechanically directs him, without his knowledge, in all his
actions; it was to designate the rapidity with, which he applied this
experience, of which he so frequently loses the connection--of which he
is so often at a loss to render himself an account, that he imagined the
word _instinct_: it appears to be the effect of magic, the operation of
a supernatural power, to the greater number of individuals: it is a word