LECTURE XVIII.

ON THE FACULTIES OF BEASTS.

BEFORE I proceed upon the body of this lecture, I wish to state, by anticipation, the doctrines it will contain; and this I shall do very shortly, reserving the proof for its proper place. Animals are not mere machines, like clocks and watches. It is a very dangerous doctrine to assert, that so much apparent choice and deliberation can exist in mere matter. If they are not merely material (like machines of human invention), they must be a composition of mind and matter. There are observable in the minds of brutes, faint traces and rudiments of the human faculties. This position has been maintained by Reid, Locke, Hartley, Stewart, and all the best writers on these subjects. If man were a solitary animal, like a lion or a bear, he would not be so superior to all animals as he is. If he had the hoof of oxen instead of hands, he would not be so superior: neither would he, if he had less perfect organs of speech; nor if his life were confined to a very few years, instead of being extended to seventy. But all these things will not do by any means alone, as the degraders of human nature have said; for there are some animals, which very nearly possess all these advantages, and yet are perfectly contemptible, when compared even to the lowest of men. But the great source of man's superiority is, the immense and immeasurable disproportion of those faculties, of which Nature has given the mere rudiments to brutes; that this disproportion has made man a speculative animal, even where his mere existence is not concerned; that it has made him a progressive animal; that it has made him a religious animal; and that upon that mere

superiority, and on the very principle that the chain of mind and spirit terminates here with man, the best and the most irrefragable arguments for the immortality of the soul are founded, which natural religion can afford: that, independent of revelation, it would be impossible not to perceive that man is the object of the creation, and that he, and he alone, is reserved for another and a better state of existence. These are my principles, in which if any man here present differ from me, I trust at least he will have the kindness and the politeness to hear me.

There is another circumstance, very decisive of the nature of instinct, and which goes strongly to show it is something very different from reason. I mean the uniformity of actions in animals. The bees now build exactly as they built in the time of Homer; the bear is ast ignorant of good manners as he was two thousand years past; and the baboon is still as unable to read and write, as persons of honor and quality were in the time of Queen Elizabeth. Of the improvements made by the insect tribe, we can not speak with much certainty; and the advocates for the perfectibility of animals, tell us, it is impossible that ants' nests may be laid out with much greater regularity than they used to be, and that experience may have taught them many methods of draining off water, and preventing the growth of ears of barley. It certainly may, but we have no sort of proof that it does; and the analogy of all large animals, whose economy we are perfectly acquainted with, and can easily observe, is against the supposition. Neither is it from any lack of inconveniences, nor any extraordinary contentedness with their situation, that any species of animals remains in such a state of sameness. The wolf often kills twenty times. as much as he wants; and if he could hit upon any means of preserving his superfluous plunder, he would not perish of hunger so often as he does. To lay traps for the hunters, and to eat them as they were caught, would be far preferable to all those animals who are the cause, and the contents, of traps themselves. Animals, like men, are goaded by wants and sufferings; but, contrary

to the nature of men, they do not overcome, but endure them. The flesh of the savage was originally as strong a temptation to the bear, as the flesh of the bear was to the savage. The wants of the one impelled him to invention; the other retained his original stupidity, in spite of his wants. There are some few and inconsiderable instances of tribes of animals making some slight change in their habits, to adapt themselves to any new situation in which they may be placed; but these changes are very little ameliorative of their condition, and by no means go to destroy the supposition of their being directed in many instances by a mere instinct. This sameness of habits in animals does not demonstrate that they are not guided by reason, but it renders it in the highest degree improbable that they should be. It is not quite impossible, that animals resolving to build a nest, should for two thousand years build precisely in the same manner, and that this structure should be equally resorted to, by those who have, and who have not, seen the model of the nest ;-it is not impossible, but it is so contrary to all former experience, that it certainly gives us no relief from the pain of being forced to believe in instinct. But the Chinese are stationary, and so are the Hindoos; they are now exactly what they were twenty centuries ago. Certainly they are: but, then, they are so from religious prejudice, transmitted from parent to child; and if it can be proved (which it can not), that bees and ants only gain their habits from old bees and ants, I admit the whole question of instinct is very materially changed: but the fact is the reverse; and if the fact were the reverse also with the Chinese,-if a young Chinese, brought out of his own country very young, were, without ever having seen another Chinese, to begin at the age of five or six to eat rice with two sticks, to clothe himself in blue and nankeen, and adore the great idol Foo, we must call this sameness the sameness of instinct; but as he does these foolish things because he lives with other Chinese, it is the sameness proceeding from imitation, and strengthened, as we happen to know it to be, by religious association. I have thus far attempted to prove that brutes are guided by some prinL

ciple, which is not the principle of reason. There is another philosophy that degrades them merely to the state of machines. The great Descartes looked upon a brute as a mere machine, that could no more help acting as it does act, and was no more conscious of how it acts, than the Androides, or the chess-playing machine. All that the arguments brought forward by Descartes, go to prove, are, that such a case is possible;-that they may be so many machines, not that they are so,-that it involves no contradiction to call them machines; which every one who understands any thing of reasoning, would willingly grant: but, observe, when we have no means of subjecting our question to the direct evidence of the senses, or to mathematical demonstration, we must resort to analogy; without which, one conjecture is quite as probable as another. We get from the observation of ourselves, the notion both of voluntary and involuntary motion. We are conscious that when we choose to put one leg before another we can do so. If we tumble out of bed, we are conscious we fall to the ground without the smallest intention of so doing, but that we are overruled by a power we can not resist. Now, having gained the knowledge of these two principles, from what passes within ourselves, we proceed to apply it, with as much attention as possible, to similarity of circumstances. A person sees another man, made to all appearance like himself; he does not think him, perhaps, quite so good looking, but it is the same sort of animal; and when he sees him walk,-presuming that like effects are produced by like causes,-he believes that he is not moved by any principle of mechanism, but that the gentleman walks because he chooses to walk but the same person puts his foot upon a stone, and falls on a sudden, flat upon his face; that, says the observer, must be involuntary motion, because I have experienced the same myself upon similar occasions. In the same manner, he perceives a horse running after his food, playing with other horses, avoiding pain and seeking pleasure. Upon the same principle, that similar effects are produced by similar causes, he determines that the horse has sensation, and consciousness, and will; still

determining the matter by a reference to his own previous experience, which, whether it be a good or a bad guide, is the only one that can possibly be resorted to in such conjectures. By a reference to the same principle, we believe that a stone, let loose from the hand, does not fall to the ground by choice, but by necessity; and between the two clear and extreme points, of motion produced by external agency, and motion produced by will, delicate cases must occur, where the opposite analogies are so equally balanced, that it is impossible to determine whether the subject thinks or not. For instance, does the sensitive plant think, when it contracts its leaves upon being touched? does it really feel danger or pain? or is it a mere involuntary contraction, such as takes place in the human body when a nerve is stimulated? When a plant in a dark cellar turns round to drink in a ray of light let in, is this the action of a reasoning being, that knows what is its proper food, and seeks it? or is it a mere case of chemical action, in which there is no interference of the will? Opposite analogies seem to be so balanced in these kinds of questions, that it is very difficult to resolve them: but to comparison alone we can resort for it; and comparison shows us, that animals can not possibly gain some of their knowledge as we gain ours; and it makes it also probable, that they do gain a very considerable part precisely as we do.

Before I proceed to speak of the faculties of animals, I wish to anticipate an objection which has been made to my use of the word faculty. Some friends of mine have asked me, whether animals had the religious faculty; and whether I mean to say, in stating they had the rudiments of our faculties, that they had the rudiments of this faculty also. Such sort of questions evince, more than any thing else, the necessity of a little candor and moderation on these topics, and of proceeding to explanation, before we proceed to blame. I never before heard religion called a faculty: a knowledge of religion is acquired by our faculties, and it is the highest proof of the degree in which we possess them; but if the power is to be confounded with the object of that power, -if all those things that we acquire by means of our