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"Smile which from reason flows,

To brute denied."

But the orang "is capable of a kind of laugh when pleasantly excited," and it is certain that there are other animals which both laugh and cry.

*

8. Nor does it consist, as so many philosophers have asserted rather than proved, in self-consciousness. "Les animaux," says M. Flourens, "sentent, connaissent, pensent; mais l'homme est le seul de tous les êtres crées à qui ce pouvoir ait été donné de sentir qu'il sent, de connaître qu'il connaît, et de penser qu'il pense." But how can this be proved? Animals, certainly, have an individualised † perception, a sensorium commune; they are certainly as conscious as man is of their own material being; and although Comte truly says that we shall never know what goes on in an animal's brain, yet it requires no wonderful knowledge to be sure that any individual cat (for instance), though it may not be able to say "I," is not in the habit of mistaking itself for any other cat! The individuality of animals is often as intense and energetic as that of men; and if conceit, pride, and shyness be signs of self-consciousness, it must exist in some animals to a very remarkable extent.

9. Nor does perfectibility, or "improveable reason," constitute a difference. "L'animal ne progresse pas," says Buffon, "l'homme est perfectible." Both propositions are questionable. Some animals can be educated, can be improved in sagacity, and trained into a thousand useful and cleanly habits; in other words, they are capable of progress and growth in intelligence; as, for instance, in the case of the dog, as every one is aware who has ever trained or observed one! And, on the contrary, some men show the gift of perfectibility to a very slight degree, and evince, as has been abundantly proved, a deeply-seated inaptitude for real civilisation, which excludes the application of the word "perfectibility" to them, except in a sense in which it may also be applied to the more intelligent animals.‡

10. Nor, again, does the difference consist in the possession of moral perceptions. Aristotle was demonstrably mistaken in saying S that man alone has the sentiment of good and evil, of justice and injustice. Animals show all the virtues and all the vices. They are

Die intellectuelle Anlage, und die Fähigkeit der Selbstbetrachtung, deren

das thier unfähig ist. Burmeister, Gesch. d. Schopfung, § 406, etc.

+ Pouchet, l. c.; Comte, Philos. Pos., v, ch. 6.

Buffon, Introd. à l'Hist. de l'Homme. So, too, Archbp. Sumner, Records of Creation, ii, 2.

§ Aristotle, Polit., i, 2.

| Zimmermann, Der Mensch., § 46,

faithful, obedient, attached, good-natured, grateful; and, on the other hand, they are false, revengeful, obstinate, artful. And, as a necessary consequence of this, they clearly possess a conscience. What careful observer of animals has not noticed the misery of a dog who goes about with a guilty conscience? He knows as well as possible that he has done wrong, and betrays by his motions that he is penitent and ashamed. And even if this were not so-if animals betrayed no sense of morality-are there not men, tribes and nations of men, of whom the same is true? Is it necessary to pause, even for a moment, to prove that there have been even civilised nations whose notions of morality were so confused, or so obliterated, as to cause them to regard with approval or indifference suicide and murder, adultery and theft?

11. Again, animals display powers of memory and of will. They can and do profit by experience. They have a sense of playfulness exhibited in a way which shows the influence of imagination; they act in a manner which often proves distinct recognition of the relation between cause and effect; some of their actions are marked by hypocrisy and deceitfulness; sometimes they have been known to exercise remarkable powers of invention; they frequently show themselves able to compute time, and sometimes manifest a sense of number; their astonishment and their sympathy are often expressed as clearly as though they had articulate utterance. These are not assertions, but facts; nor are they founded on doubtful stories in Pliny and Ælian*, but on well-authenticated cases, for which I refer the curious reader to the excellent book of Mr. Thompson on the Passions of Animals; a book which will afford him the strongest possible confirmation of every argument which we have here adduced.

12. Does the difference, then, consist in a sense of religion? This is the conclusion of M. de Quatrefages, who would define man, in his distinction from the brute, as "an organised being, living, feeling, moving spontaneously, endowed with morality and a sense of religion (religiosité)." We have seen that "morality" may be struck out of this definition; nor is "religiosity" at all a satisfactory criterion. If animals are not insensible to the broad outlines of the moral law, can we deny them that (of course rudimentary) sense of religion, which perhaps can only exist in the union of the intellectual faculties with a sense of right and wrong. Is there, at any rate, any proof, or shadow of proof, that it does not exist in some animals? Is there, again, any proof, or shadow of proof, that it exists in any higher degree in all men? Religion among some tribes seems to resolve itself into a

* See Pliny, viii, 30; Solinus, vii, x1; Ælian, iii, 10, vii, 22, xvi, 15, xvii, passim; Michaelis, De Origine Linguæ, p. 140. seq.; Vogt, Vorlesungen, § 255.

mere dread of the unknown; and this exists among the more intelligent animals, especially, as has been noticed so frequently, in the horse and the dog. A dog in the possession of Professor Vogt's father exhibited the liveliest terror at the presence of a ghost in the shape of a phosphorescent tree.

13. I have not entered on the question whether animals have a soul; and probably, after all that has been said, the inquiry would be useless. If the soul be an Entelechy, as Aristotle asserted; if it be, as Plato said, that which displays itself in three energies-the rational, the irascible, and the appetitive; if, with some modern philosophers, we regard it as "that inferior part of our intellectual nature, which shows itself in the phenomena of dreaming, and which is connected with the state of the brain;" if, as Aristotle in another place defines it, it be "that by which we live, feel, or perceive, move, and understand;" if it be the ego or the sum of its faculties; if its essence reside in thought, in sensation, or in will; if it be, as Reid defined it, "the principle of thought;" if it be "a self-moving force" or "incorporate spirit;" if it be, in short, anything which you like to call it, who will assert, or rather who will prove, that animals have no soul? It is no part of my task here to inquire what the soul is, and I have merely taken the readiest definitions that came to hand*: but does any one of these definitions, or all of them put together, furnish a proved and specific characteristic of the genus Man? Did not the feeling that such is not the case lead to the automatic theory of Descartes, Polignac, and Priestley on the one hand, and, on the other hand, to the beliefs of Father Bongéant and French, that they were acted on by spirits, and of Newton and Hancock, that their actions are directly due to the agency of the Creator?

14. Finally, then, is immortality the distinguishing point? Here, again, who shall venture to say? If no one but a rash man would venture to assert that any animals are immortal, would any one be less rash who should take upon himself to declare positively that no animals can be? Certain it is, that the moral and physical analogies led Bishop Butler to regard a future life for animals as resulting from some of the same general arguments as those which have weight in establishing the immortality † of man. The great bishop deprecates all difficulties on the score of the manner in which animals are to be hereafter dealt with, as wholly founded in our ignorance; neverthe

See Fleming, Vocab. of Philos., s. v., and p. 263.

It is, however, observable that in the Bible, uxh is used for animal life, and πvoh, veμa, for the life of men. For the well known passage of Butler, see Analogy, ch. i: "But it is said that these observations are equally applicable to brutes," etc.

less I cannot refrain from here quoting a powerful passage from Mr. Ruskin to show what moral reason we have for not denying that brutes also may be destined for a future existence. The doctrine of immortality is deeply mingled with that of future retribution; and Mr. Ruskin asks, “Can any man entirely account for all that happens to a cab-horse? Has he ever looked fairly at the fate of one of these beasts as it is dying? measured the work it has done, and the reward it has got? put his hand upon the bloody wounds through which its bones are piercing, and so looked up to heaven with an entire understanding of heaven's ways about the horse? Yet the horse is a fact -no dream—no revelation among the myrtle trees by night; and the dust it lies upon, and the dogs that eat it, are facts; and yonder happy person, whose the horse was till its knees were broken over the hurdles, who had an immortal soul to begin with, and peace and wealth to help forward his immortality, . . . this happy person shall have no stripes-shall have only the horse's fate of annihilation; or if other things are indeed reserved for him, heaven's kindness or omnipotence is to be doubted therefore."

To those who think over this passage, it will not appear irrelevant in the present discussion, and it may perhaps show the possibility of a doubt whether the destinies even of the future be reserved for man alone. Even Leibnitz, regarding individual permanence as no exclusive privilege of man, extended it to animals also, attributing "indefectibility" to them, while he reserved the word immortality to paint the higher possibilities of man.

That man is almost immeasurably removed from animals in the degree of development which their several faculties have attained, has never been disputed. But "no difference in degree can constitute a difference in kind;" and if it be asked "What is the generic point of distinction between men and animals?" the answer must still be, Natura non agit saltatim; there is no such point of distinction; man does not form an order apart from the rest of the animal world; he is linked to that world by humiliating, but indissoluble ties of resemblance and connection; and even the matter which constitutes both his body and that of animals is but the same as that which goes to the composition of the inorganic world.

PHILALETHES.

164

ON THE PHENOMENA OF HYBRIDITY.*

If we can suppose an observer so favourably placed as to be capable of taking in all animated nature at a glance, and to be at one and the same time equipped with all our present stock of scientific knowledge, without being embarrassed with any natural or acquired prejudices, let us endeavour to imagine what would be the sequence of his ideas, and his conclusions on the phenomena of the production of offspring by generation. On considering in what form and under what conditions animal life may be said to commence, he would be aware that all animated beings spring from the union of two cells in a proper receptacle, which is for the most part a womb. "Whatever be the difference," says Agassiz, "in the outward appearance or the habits of animals, one thing is common to them all without exception: at some period of their lives they produce eggs, which, being fertilised, give rise to beings of the same kind as the parent! The true egg, or, as it is called, the ovarian egg, with which the life of every kind of living beings may begin, is a minute sphere, uniform in appearance throughout the animal kingdom." This ovarian egg, lying thus in the womb of every female of every kind of living being, is fertilised by the introduction and contact of an equally microscopic body, which proceeds from a male, and is equally similar in all males,† so far as our present microscopes can discover. The conjunction, therefore, of a sperm-cell with a germ-cell in a fitting receptacle, would appear to our observer the only necessary for causing an evolution of life. Nor is it possible at present to say that such a conclusion would be wrong. Indeed, the well-known instance of the foetus developed in a boy's body, and preserved in the Hunterian Museum, is sufficient to show that even the usual receptacle of the microscopic cells, if they can be brought together, may be dispensed with, so far as an actual commencement of life is concerned. Our observer, being of course

*On the Phenomena of Hybridity in the Genus Homo, by Dr. Paul Broca. Translated and edited by C. Carter Blake, F.G.S., F.A.S.L. Longmans: 1864. + This has nowhere been better treated of than in that admirable book The Elements of Social Science, fifth edition, E. Truelove, 240, Strand. "There is no distinguishable difference between the germ of the humblest plant and of man." (P. 69.)

Some say positively there is no difference. Thus J. W. Draper, Hist. of the Intellectual Development of Europe, London, 1864, vol. i, p. 226. "From a single cell, scarcely more than a step above the inorganic state, not differing, as we may infer both from the appearance it offers, and the forms through which it runs in the earlier stages of life, from the cell out of which any other animal or plant, even the humblest, is derived."

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