MENTAL CONSTITUTION OF ANIMALS. 267 



simply the penalty paid for the superior endowment. It is 

 here that the so-called imperfection of our nature resides- 

 Causality and conscientiousness are, it is true, guides over all ; 

 but even these are only faculties of the same indefinite poten- 

 tiality as the rest, and partake accordingly of the same inequa- 

 lity of action. Man is therefore a piece of mechanism, which 

 never can act so as to satisfy his own ideas of what he might 

 be for he can imagine a state of moral perfection, (as he can 

 imagine a globe formed of diamonds, pearls, and rubies.) 

 though his constitution forbids him to realize it. There ever 

 will be, in the best-disposed and most disciplined minds, occa- 

 sional discrepancies between the amount of temptation and the 

 power summoned for regulation or resistance, or between the 

 stimulus and the mobility of the faculty ; and hence those errors, 

 and shortcomings, and excesses, without end, with which the 

 good are constantly finding cause to charge themselves. There 

 is at the same time even here a possibility of improvement. 

 In infancy, the impulses are all of them irregular ; a child is 

 cruel, cunning, and false, under the slightest temptation, but in 

 time learns to control these inclinations, and to be habitually 

 humane, frank, and truthful. So is human society, in its 

 earliest stages, sanguinary, aggressive, and deceitful, but, in 

 time, becomes just, faithful, and benevolent. To such im- 

 provements there is a natural tendency, which will operate in 

 all fair circumstances, though it is not to be expected that irre- 

 gular and undue impulses will ever be altogether banished 

 from the system. 



It appears surprising that beings are born into the world, 

 whose organization is such that they unavoidably run into 

 vicious courses ; such are the persons said to have the criminal 

 type of brain. A great mystery besets us when we consider 

 individuals as being determinately invested with evil tenden- 

 cies by a special act of creative power. Under a system in 

 which the Deity is regarded as acting by general arrangements, 

 a light breaks upon us. It is a law of organization, that 

 emotions much indulged in produce a change in the constitu- 

 tion of the being indulging in them. His character is so far 

 changed, and this quality becomes liable to hereditary 

 descent. It may reappear either in his own immediate off- 

 spring, or some more remote descendant ; for hereditary 

 qualities often pass over intermediate generations. Thus, one 

 human being has his organization determined to vice merely 

 because of the ill-controlled feelings of a parent or other pre- 



