very alone, as the enemies to man have absurdly contended. The ape has hands as good, and stature as great, and is as fond of society, and his senses are as acute as ours; and yet, the ape has certainly hitherto taken no very surprising part in the political revolutions of the earth, - done little for science, and seems, with the exception of a few atheists and metaphysicians, to be held in very little honour by anybody. The fact seems to be, that though almost every quality of mind we possess, can be traced in some trifling degree in brutes, yet that degree, compared with the extent in which the same quality is observable in man, is very low and inconsiderable. For instance, we cannot say that animals are devoid of curiosity, but they have a very slight degree of curiosity: they imitate, but they imitate very slightly in comparison with men; they cannot imitate anything very difficult; and many of them hardly imitate at all: they abstract, but they cannot make such compound abstractions as men do; they have no such compounded abstractions as city, prudence, fortitude, parliament, and justice: they reason, but their reasonings are very short and very obvious: they invent, but their inventions are extremely easy, and not above the reach of a human idiot. The story I quoted from Bailly, about the ape and the walnuts, is one of the most extraordinary I ever read; but what a wretched limit of intellect does it imply, to be cited as an instance of extraordinary sagacity! But all the faculties which every animal possesses, are given him for the mere purposes of existence. When his life is endangered, when his young are to be secured, and his prey entrapped, he developes the limited resources of his nature; for every thing else he has no talents at all; nor has any animal ever betrayed the slightest disposition to knowledge,except as knowledge gratified immediately his hunger, or as would immediately have secured his life. Whereas, man is so far from being influenced only by the moment which is passing over his head, that he looks back to centuries past for the guide of his actions, and to centuries to come for their motive. In fact, nothing can be more weak and mistaken than to suppose that the doctrine of the immortality of the soul, depends upon making brutes mere machines, or denying to them the mere outlines of our faculties. To talk of God being the soul of brutes, is the worst and most profane degradation of divine power. Το suppose that He who regulates the rolling of the planets, and the return of seasons, by general laws, interferes, by a special act of his power, to make a bird fly, and an insect flutter, - to suppose that a gaudy moth cannot expand its wings to the breeze, or a lark unfold its plumage to the sun, without the special mandate of that God who fixes incipient passions in the human heart, and leaves them to produce a Borgia to scourge mankind, or a Newton to instruct them, is not piety, or science, but a most pernicious substitution of degrading conjectures, from an ignorant apprehension of the consequences of admitting plain facts. In the name of common sense, what have men to fear from allowing to beasts their miserable and contemptible pittance of faculties? What can those men have read of the immortality of the soul? what can they think of the strength of those arguments on which it is founded, if they believe it requires the aid of such contemptible and boyish jealousy of the lower order of beings? what must they feel within themselves, to conceive such arguments? what notion must they communicate to others of the fulness, and sufficiency, and strength of those powers, when they stand quibbling and trembling, at every faint semblance of reason, which a beast exhibits in searching for water and flesh, and eluding the spear of the hunter? The enemies of the soul's immortality I do not fear; I know how often they have been vanquished before; and I am quite sure that they will be overthrown again with a mighty overthrow, as often as they do appear. But I confess I have some considerable dread of the indiscreet friends of religion. I tremble at that respectable imbecility which shuffles away the plainest truths, and thinks the strongest of all causes wants the weakest of all aids. I shudder at the consequences of fixing the great proofs of religion upon any other basis, than that of the widest investigation, and most honest statement of facts. I allow such nervous and timid friends to religion to be the best and most pious of men; but a bad defender of religion is so much the most pernicious person in the whole community, that I most humbly hope such friends will evince their zeal for religion, by ceasing to defend it; and remember that not every man is qualified to be the advocate of a cause in which the mediocrity of his understanding may possibly compromise the dearest and most affecting interests of society. What have the shadow and mockery of faculties, given to beasts, to do with the immortality of the soul? Have beasts any general fear of annihilation? have they any love of fame? do their small degrees of faculties ever give them any feelings of this nature? are their minds perpetually escaping into futurity? have they any love of posthumous fame? have they any knowledge of God? have they ever reached, in their conceptions, the slightest traces of an hereafter? can they form the notion of duty and accountability? is it any violation of any one of the moral attributes of the Deity, to suppose that they go back to their dust, and that we do not? It is no reason to say, that, because they partake in the slightest degree of our nature, they are entitled to all the privileges of our nature; because, upon that principle, if we partake of the nature of any higher order of spirits, we ought to be them, and not ourselves; and they ought to be some higher order still, and so on. And if it be inconsistent to suppose a difference in duration, then also it is to suppose a difference in degree, of mind; and then every human being has a right to complain that he is not a Newton. To conclude: Such truths want not such aids. The weakest and the most absurd arguments ever used against religion, have been the attempts to compare brutes with men; and the weakest answer to these arguments have been, the jealousies which men have exhibited of brutes. As facts are fairly stated, and boldly brought forward, the more all investigation goes to establish the ancient opinion of man, before it was confirmed by revealed religion, that brutes are of this world only; that man is imprisoned here only for a season, to take a better or a worse hereafter, as he deserves it. This old truth is the fountain of all goodness, and justice, and kindness among men : may we all feel it intimately, obey it perpetually, and profit by it eternally! LECTURE XIX. ON THE CONDUCT OF THE UNDERSTANDING.-PART II. I CONCLUDED my last course with a Lecture upon the Conduct of the Understanding *, (which I intended, as I do this, merely for the instruction of young people;) but as such a subject could not, of course, be exhausted in any single discussion, I reserved the conclusion of it for the present period. As it does not appear to me very material to observe any order with respect to this subject, I shall merely state the observations it suggests, as they occur to my mind, without attempting to arrange them. The It would be a very curious question to agitate, how far understanding is transmitted from parent to child; and within what limits it can be improved by culture: whether all men are born equal, with respect to their understanding; or, whether there is an original diversity antecedent to all imitation and instruction. analogy of animals is in favour of the transmissibility of mind. Some ill-tempered horses constantly breed ill-tempered colts; and the foal never has seen the sire, therefore, in this, there can be no imitation. If the eggs of a wild duck are hatched under a tame duck, the young brood will be much wilder than any common brood of poultry: if they are kept all their lives in a farm-yard, and treated kindly, and fed well, their eggs hatched under another bird produce a much tamer race. What is the difference of suspicion and fear observable in the two broods, but a direct trans * Page 92. |