258 MENTAL CONSTITUTION OF ANIMALS. 



a thing perfectly intangible, weightless, well described by 

 modern philosophers as a force rather than a substance, and 

 yet an actual existence in nature, as is sufficiently proved by 

 its effects. So also may its ally mental action be intangible, 

 immaterial, and yet a real existence, and ruled by the Eternal 

 through His laws. 1 



Common observation shows a great general superiority of the 

 human mind over that of the inferior animals. Man's mind 

 is almost infinite in device ; it ranges over all the world ; it 

 forms the most wonderful combinations : it seeks back into the 

 past, and stretches forward into the future ; while the animals 

 generally appear to have a narrow range of thought and action. 

 But so also has an infant but a limited range, and yet it is 

 mind which works there, as well as in the most accomplished 

 adults. The difference between mind in the lower animals 

 and in man is a difference in degree only ; it is not a specific 

 difference. All who have studied animals by actual observa- 

 tion, and even those who have given a candid attention to the 

 subject in books, must attain more or less clear convictions of 

 this truth, notwithstanding the obscurity which prejudice may 

 have engendered. We see animals capable of affection, jealousy, 

 envy ; we see them quarrel, and conduct quarrels in the very 

 manner pursued by the ruder and less educated of our own 

 race. We see them liable to flattery, inflated with pride, and 

 dejected by shame. We see them as tender to their young as 

 human parents are, and as faithful to a trust as the most con- 

 scientious of human servants. The horse is startled by mar- 

 vellous objects, as a man is. The dog and many others show 

 tenacious memory. The dog also proves himself possessed of 

 imagination, by the act of dreaming. Horses, finding them- 

 selves in want of a shoe, have of their own accord gone to a 

 farrier's shop where they were shod before. Cats closed up in 



1 If mental action is electric, the proverbial quickness of thought 

 that is, the quickness of the transmission of sensation and will may be 

 presumed to have been brought to an exact measurement. The speed 

 of light has long been known to be about 192,000 miles per second, and 

 the experiments of Professor Wheatstone have shown that the electric 

 agent travels (if I may so speak) at least as rapidly, thus showing a 

 likelihood that one law rules the movements of all the "imponderable 

 bodies." Mental action may accordingly be presumed to have a rapidity 

 equal to one hundred and ninety-two thousand' miles in the second a 

 rate evidently far beyond what is necessary to make the design and exe- 

 cution of any of our ordinary muscular movements apparently identical 

 in point of time, which they are. 



