286 The Scottish Naturalist. 



self-controlled force of voluntary agents, the human race could 

 maintain no competition with it. In denying animals self-con- 

 sciousness and will, and holding that psychosis in them is auto- 

 matic, we must carefully observe how deep the distinction between 

 them and man goes in consequence. The difference covers 

 the whole mental field, and leaves no phenomenon of a 

 psychical character in the two beings identical. We often speak 

 as if, up to a certain stage of mental faculty, the two minds 

 were the same in their manifestations. But this cannot be, if 

 the above distinction be established. It begins at the begin- 

 ning of mental action — i.e., at its lowest form of energy, and 

 passes on all through. Sensation is the first and simplest form 

 of mental energy ; and we may suppose that it is exactly iden- 

 tical in man and animals, inasmuch as something which we 

 can only call by the name of sensation, is common to them. 

 But it is not identical. Animal sensation and human sensation 

 are not the same sensation. There is a characteristic that 

 places them wide apart. In the human form of sensation, 

 there is always accompanying it the consciousness of the sensa- 

 tion as mine. Consciousness of sensation as a form of expe- 

 rience is at the same time consciousness of Personality, or self. 

 We begin as we end the gradations of our mental power, with 

 a home-coming consciousness of ourselves. All the mental 

 force exerted, or states experienced, are known as ours. The 

 animal does not disengage itself from nature, or stand over 

 against it, as man does. 



In making out the negative position that the animal soul is 

 not" the same essentially as that of man, other two remarks may 

 be made. One is in reference to the bodily forms of animals. 

 According to the fitnesses of things, and the very conditions of 

 human thinking, these forms for ever prevent us from imagining 

 that the indwelling souls are of the human type ; otherwise, 

 Nature has here lost her rule and forgotten the proprieties, 

 and not merely cast pearls before swine, but put a jewel in 

 their snout. Another remark is teleological. The purposes 

 for which animals exist do not seem to raise them above serving 

 the interests of physical nature, and thus, and otherwise more 

 directly, ministering to man's self and convenience and neces- 

 sities. And if the very object of their being bind them to the 

 world in such a subordinate capacity, why throw away on them 

 a soul like that of man, which is the breath of the Almighty, 

 and in virtue of which its possessor is born to rule nature and 



