128

Classification of the Sci.
25

to accumulate vast numbers of ordinary cancelled two cent stamps. Have they not been animated by the same instinct as Sage's, merely varied in an inessential particular? At the Lenox library there are a couple of dozen copies of folio Shakespeares, mere duplicates mostly, which were collected at great expense by one gentleman. It is usual with book-collectors to feel that they would demean themselves by reading their books. Are not all these phenomena effects of the same instinct that makes a magpie or a rat amass a horde of miscellaneous objects? In the present state of our knowledge we cannot make sure whether it is so or not. We are reduced to guesses founded on the apparent similarity of the relations of the different actions to reasonable action. The actions being those of different men and not being apparently due entirely to anything inherited by every member of the race, cannot well have much, if any,