ANIMAL PSYCHOLOGY. 249 



stinct," to explain, or rather to leave unexplained, 

 certain mental phenomena exhibited equally by man- 

 kind and the inferior animals, so long as it is restricted 

 to those mental processes which are beyond the reach 

 of consciousness. But the attempt to explain all the 

 mental phenomena manifested by the mutes by means 

 of an arbitrary term is an evasion of the true ques- 

 tion involved. It would be difficult, in right reason, 

 to discover the slightest tendency to lower the per- 

 sonal dignity of man, or to alter in the least his re- 

 sponsibility to God, by recognizing the existence in 

 the mutes of a thinking self-conscious principle, the 

 same in kind that man possesses, but feebler in de- 

 gree; nor even by conceding their possession of a 

 moral sense, although, so far as our present knowl- 

 edge extends, it is so faintly developed as scarcely to 

 deserve the name. Man, at least, should neither ad- 

 mit nor deny the moral sense to the lower animals 

 because of the supposed bearing of such an admission 

 upon his own relations to the Supreme Being. The 

 question of the degree and kind of their mental en- 

 dowments should stand upon its own basis, and be re- 

 solved upon its own merits, I trust the sensibilities 

 of no one will be disturbed by this method of intro- 

 ducing the subject of Animal Psychology; and that 

 the subject may be considered unaffected by external 

 complications, and be studied independently upon its 

 own authoritative facts. 



When the Creator brought into existence the vari- 

 ous species of animals, He intrusted to each individ- 

 ual being the care of his own life. As a principle of 

 intelligence was indispensable to capacitate each one 

 to maintain and preserve that life, we find each indi- 



