MENTAL CONSTITUTION OF ANIMALS. 265 



This liability to flit from under the control of one feeling to 

 the control of another, constitutes what is recognised as free 



7 O 



will in man, being nothing more than a vicissitude in the 

 supremacy of the faculties over each other. 



It is a common mistake to suppose that the individuals of 

 our own species are all of them formed with similar faculties 

 similar in power and tendency and that education and the 

 influence of circumstances produce all the differences which we 

 observe. There is not, in the old systems of mental philosophy, 

 any doctrine more opposite to the truth than this. It is refuted 

 at once by the great differences of intellectual tendency and 

 moral disposition to be observed amongst a group of young 

 children, who have been all brought up in circumstances per- 

 fectly identical even in twins, who have never been but in 

 one place, under the charge of one nurse, attended to alike in 

 all respects. The mental characters of individuals are in- 

 herently various, as the forms of their persons and the features 

 of their faces are j and education and circumstances, though 

 their influence is not to be despised, are incapable of entirely 

 altering these characters, where they are strongly developed. 

 The different mental characters of individuals may be presumed 

 from analogy to depend on the same law of development which 

 we have seen determining the forms of being and the mental 

 characters of particular species. This we may conceive as 

 carrying forward the intellectual powers and moral disposi- 

 tions of some to a high pitch, repressing those of others at a 

 moderate amount, and thus producing all the varieties which 

 we see in our fellow-creatures. Thus, a Cuvier and a Newton 

 are but expansions of a clown ; and the person emphatically 

 called the wicked man, is one whose highest moral feelings are 

 rudimental. Such differences are not confined to our species ; 

 they are only less strongly marked in many of the inferior 

 animals. There are clever dogs and wicked horses, as well as 

 clever men and wicked men ; and education sharpens the 

 talents, and in some degree regulates the dispositions of 

 animals, as it does our own. 



There is, nevertheless, a general adaptation of the mental 

 constitution of man to the circumstances in which he lives, as 

 there is between all the parts of nature to each other. The 

 goods of the physical world are only to be realized by ingenuity 

 and industrious exertion ; behold, accordingly, an intellect full 

 of device, arid a fabric of the faculties which would fall to 

 pieces or destroy itself if it were not kept in constant occupa- 



