a66 STUDIES OF NATURE. 



Animals have a fenfibility only of objeds which 

 have particular conformities to their wants. It 

 may be affirmed that they have, in this refpeft, a 

 ihare of reafon as perfed as our own. Had New- 

 ton been a bee, he could not, with all his geo- 

 metry, have conflruded his cell in a hive, without 

 giving it, as the honey-bee has done, fix equal 

 partitions. But Man differs from animals, in his 

 capacity of extending this fentiment of conformity 

 to all the relations of Nature, however foreign 

 they may be to his perfonal demands. It is this, 

 extenfion of reafon which has procured for him,^ 

 by way of eminence, the denomination of a ra- 

 tional, animal. 



It is unqueflionabiy true, that if all the parti- 

 cular rationality of all animals were united, the. 

 fum would probably tranfcend the general reafon 

 of Man ; for human reafon has devifed moft of 

 it's arts and crafts, entirely from an imitation of 

 their produdions ; befides, all animals come into 

 the world with their peculiar induflry, whereas 

 Man is under the neceffity of acquiring his, at the 

 expenfe of much time and refledion ; and, as I 

 have juft obferved, by imitating the induftry and 

 fkill of another. But Man excels them, not only 

 by uniting, in himfelf alone, the intelligence feat- 

 tered over all the reft, but by his capability of rif- 

 ing upward to the fource of all conformities, 



namely. 



