278 THE AMERICAN BEAVER. 



premiss ever been proved by any philosopher, namely, 

 that the souls of brutes must necessarily be destroyed 

 and annihilated by death. Leibnitz, who has defended 

 the immortality of the human soul with stronger 

 arguments than even Descartes, writes: 'I found at 

 last how the souls of brutes and their sensations do 

 not at all interfere with the immortality of human 

 souls; on the contrary, nothing seems better to 

 establish our natural immortality than to beheve that 

 all souls are imperishable.'"^ To nearly the same 

 effect, Agassiz had previously expressed himself. 

 "When animals fight with one another," he says, 

 "when they associate for a common purpose, when 

 they warn one another in danger, when they come to 

 the rescue of one another, when they display pain or 

 joy, they manifest impulses of the same kind as are 

 considered among the moral attributes of man. The 

 range of the passions is even as extensive as that of 

 the human mind, and I am at a loss to perceive a dif- 

 ference in kind between them, however much they 

 may differ in degree, and in the manner in which 

 they are expressed. * * * This argues strongly 

 in favor of the existence in every animal of an im- 

 material principle similar to that which, by its excel- 

 lence and superior endowments, places man so much 

 above animals. Yet the principle exists unquestion- 

 ably, and whether it be called soul, reason, or in- 

 stinct, it presents in the whole range of organized 

 beings a series of phenomena closely linked together; 

 and upon it are based not only the highest manifesta- 

 tions of mind, but the very permanence of the specific 



^ Science of Language. Scribner's ed., lee. ix. p. 349. 



