then, also, 'tis very convenient. Our ships must have a steersman, you
know. And, _par exemple,_ unless we call it sympathetic, that strange
susceptibility which we see in many persons, detect in ourselves
sometimes, what name have we to give it at all? Unless we call it
sympathy, how shall we define those mysterious premonitions, shadowy
warnings, solemn foretokens, that fall upon us now and then as the dew
falls upon the grass-leaf, that make our blood to shiver and our flesh
to quake, and will not by any means permit themselves to be passed by
or nullified? 'T is a fact that is irrepressible; and, in persons with
imagination of morbid tendency, this spontaneous sympathy takes a
hold so strong as to present visibly the image about which there is
concern,--and, behold! your veritable spectre is begotten! So, again, of
your 'love at first sight,' _comme on dit_,--that inevitable attraction
which one person exerts towards another, in spite, it may be, both of
reason and judgment. If this be not child of sympathy, what parentage
shall we assign it? And antipathy, Monsieur, the medal's reverse,--your
_bete noire_, for instance,--expound me that! Why do you so shudder at
sight of this or that innocent object? You cannot reason it away,--'t is
always there; you cannot explain it, nor diagnose its symptoms,--'t is
a part of you, governed by the same laws that govern your 'elective
affinities' throughout. But note, Monsieur! You and I and man in general
are not alone in this: the whole organic world--nay, some say the entire
universe, inorganic as well as organic--is subject to these impalpable
sympathetic forces. Is the hypothesis altogether fanciful of chemical
election and rejection,--of the kiss and the kick of the magnet? Your
Sensitive-Plant, your Dionea, your Rose of Jericho, your Orinoco-blossom
that sets itself afloat in superb faith that the ever-moving waters
will bring it to meet its mate and lover,--are not these instances of
sympathy? And tell me by what means your eye conquers the furious dog
that would bite you,--tell me how that dog is able to follow your
traces, and to find the quail or the fox for you,--tell me how the cat
chills the bird it would spring upon,--how the serpent fascinates its
victim with a flash of its glittering eye. Our 'dumb beasts' yet have a
language of their own, unguessed of us, yet perfectly intelligible
to them,--how? We call this, Instinct. _Eh, bien, Monsieur!_ what is
Instinct, but