286 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



determine, not easy to draw the dividing line, and say where 

 the brute intelligence stops and human intelligence begins." 

 And yet he afterwards denies to animals intelligence in the 

 true acceptation of the term. He claims that many of the 

 acts of animals and insects develop even greater skill than 

 can be seen in man, and yet he contends that they do not 

 perform them by the light of intelligence. He maintains that 

 instinct is a law of action put into the animal at its creation, 

 which works in him, not by reason or reflection, but by a blind 

 impulse ; that bird or bee does nothing by the force of educa- 

 tion or progress in knowledge ; that the one builds her hive 

 alone, and at first, as well as ever she will afterwards, and 

 the other her nest the same. The intelligence is not that of 

 the creature, he says, but of the Creator, and that it is given 

 as a law of the animal's being, by which he blindly acts. 



This author raises the question as to whether the differences 

 between man and the brute are those of kind or degree. 

 After some discussion of the question, he arrives at the con- 

 clusion that the intelligence of the brute differs in kind, and 

 not in degree merely, from that of man. The use of the word 

 " merely " seems to be quite an admission ; and yet he labors 

 to show that the beast does not possess any of the higher 

 faculties, but only those of sense. 



He begins his detail of denials by saying that the brute is 

 not "a moral and religious being." With this I presume we 

 all agree. For to be a moral and reli odious beinoj one must 

 be a moral agent, which neither domestic animals nor any 

 others of the lower species are supposed to be. Says the late 

 Rev. Richard Watson, of England, one of the most profound 

 writers, " He is a moral agent who is capable of moral actions ; 

 and an action is rendered moral by two circumstances — that 

 it is voluntary, and that it has respect to some rule which 

 determines it to be good or evil." And Sir William Hamilton 

 tells us " wherein the moral agency of man consists. Man 

 is a moral agent only as he is accountable for his actions ; in 

 other words, as he is the object of praise or blame ; and this 

 he is only inasmuch as he has prescribed to him a rule of 

 duty, and as he is able to act, or not to act, in conformity 

 with its precepts." And thus we say, that while on the one 

 hand a law, or rule, has been made known to man, and power 



