s even greater--we
have decidedly two separate qualities. We are instinctive as well as
reasonable beings; and what is inventive instinct but a species of
reason, if not reason itself?

But although I say that it is hardly possible to draw the line of
demarcation, I do not mean to say that they are one and the same thing;
for instinct and reason, if we are to judge by ourselves, are in direct
opposition. Self-preservation is instinctive; all the pleasures of
sense, all that people are too apt to consider as happiness in this
world; I may say, all that we are told is wrong, all that our reason
tells us we are not to indulge in, is _instinct_.

Such are the advantages of being reasonable beings in _this world_;
undoubtedly, we have a right to claim for ourselves, and deny to the
rest of the creation, the enjoyments of the next. Byron says:--

"Man being reasonable, must get drunk."

That is to say, being reasonable, and finding his reason a reason for
being unhappy, he gets rid of his reason whenever he can. So do the
most intellectual animals. The elephant and the monkey enjoy their
bottle as much as we do. I should have been more inclined to agree with
Byron, if he had said:--

Man being reasonable, must _go to the devil_.

For what are poor reasonable creatures to do, when instinct leads them
to the "old gentleman;" and reason, let her tug as hard as she pleases,
is not sufficiently powerful to overcome the adverse force.

After all, I don't think that I have come to a very satisfactory
conclusion. Like a puppy running round after his own tail, I am just
where I was when I set out; but, like the puppy, I have been amused for
the time. I only hope the reader will have been so too.

And now, my brethren, I proceed to the second part of my discourse,
which is, to defend anglers and fly-fishers from the charge of cruelty.

It is very true that Shakespeare says, "The poor beetle that we tread
on, in mortal sufferance, feels a pang as great as when a giant dies;"
and it is equally true that it is as false as it is poetical.

There is a scale throughout nature, and that scale has been divided by
unerring justice. Man is at the summit of this scale, being more
fearfully and wonderfully made, more perfect than any other of the
creation, more perfect in his form, more perfect in his intellect; he is
finer strung in his nerves, acuter in his sympathies; he has more
susceptibility to pleasure, more suscepti