The Scottish Naturalist. 93 



all maintained that God Himself is the moving principle of the 

 animal. (Newton, Query 31st; Bayle, 8. 770; Sir H. Holland, 

 p. 217). This opinion, which probably was as much the issue 

 of despair as the one it seems to avenge, rouses the indignation 

 of Sydney Smith, who says, " To talk of God being the soul of 

 brutes is the worst and most profane degradations of Divine 

 power." He thinks that men are jealous of any shreds of mind 

 belonging to their animal rivals, when they thus ascribe their 

 actions to some eternal principle. " In the name of common 

 sense," he says, " what have men to fear from allowing to beasts 

 their miserable and contemptible pittance of faculties ? " This 

 jealousy if it ever existed has disappeared, and men are again 

 magnanimous. The view that has taken possession of the field 

 during this generation, being espoused by most great names in 

 ' science if not in philosophy, and bidding fair to subdue all 

 things to itself, is, whatever else it may be, positively or nega- 

 tively, not one that is niggardly in its concessions to the brutes. 

 Sydney Smith, when lecturing before the Royal Institution 

 on the faculties of animals, began with these words. " I. con- 

 fess I treat on this subject with some degree of apprehension 

 and reluctance ; because I should be very sorry to do injustice 

 to the poor brutes who have no professors, to revenge their 

 cause by lecturing on our faculties ; and at the same time I 

 know there is a very strong anthropical party, who view all 

 eulogiums on the brute creation with a very considerable degree 

 of suspicion, and look upon every compliment which is paid to 

 the ape as high treason to the dignity of man." The times are 

 changed. The poor brutes " have many professors now to 

 lecture on our faculties in their interest." Instead ofa" strong 

 anthropical party " who scruple to grant the poor brutes any- 

 thing, there is a strong anthropological party who will not 

 scruple to grant them everything. 



The opinion which scientists now generally espouse is, so 

 far, the Platonist, the first opinion with which philosophy began 

 the course of its evolution, viz., that the mental manifestations 

 of men and animals are of the same kind, and that there is no 

 essential mental distinction, phenomenal or substantial, between 

 the two orders of being. But this opinion also combines in its 

 explanations the principle of the third or Cartesian view. By 

 recent researches, both physiological and psychological, at the 

 hands specially of three investigators, who represent so many 

 successive stages in the advancing development of the subject — 



