498 



SECOND SUBSECTION. 



PSYCHOLOGICAL PHYSIOLOGY. 



283. 



AFTER the consideration of the corporeal functions of insects there 

 still remains a whole series of phenomena which are not the pure 

 results thereof, but are superior intellectual functions, which may be 

 exercised apparently at the will of the insect. Similar phenomena 

 naturalists have observed, not in insects only but likewise in the higher 

 animals, and in them very especially, and have found therein the 

 analogies of the intellectual powers of man, yet with the essential 

 difference that these phenomena in animals must necessarily ensue, 

 whereas man, superior to the compulsion of nature, has the means of 

 resisting this necessity by his volition. Hence the idea of freedom. 

 Were the enjoyment of this freedom, and indeed especially of moral 

 freedom, for external freedom is merely the result of internal or moral 

 freedom, given to man by nature with restrictions, his intellectual 

 superiority would then completely vanish, as he would then necessarily 

 exercise all his functions within certain limitations, and never remain 

 within these limits 'nor ever surpass them. His freedom then would 

 also be merely apparent, and he, as well as all animals, would then be 

 curbed by the chain of certain instincts, the satisfying of which would 

 become a necessity. But man is free, that is to say, he has the faculty 

 of in so far subjecting his natural instincts to other relations, either 

 voluntary on his part, or introduced by social life, as the law of self 

 preservation will admit, and may satisfy them at his own discre- 

 tion ; whereas the animal is not free, it exercises all, both corporeal 

 and intellectual functions, from a determinate necessity, from which it 

 has not the power of emancipating itself. Thence the entire greatness 

 of man consists in his freedom, and in it consists the faculty of his 

 progressive development or perfection, as well as the possibility of his 

 degeneration, and which would place him beneath the animal. Tlie 



