12 An Inquiry respecting 



imagine, alone sufficient to refute the supposition. For it is but 

 reasonable to conclude, that the conscious powers of the creature 

 will be according to the ends of its existence ; and as these ends 

 are in the brute creation neither moral nor scientific, but purely 

 natural, and, as regards themselves, only subservient to what is 

 moral and scientific, it thence would follow that they are not 

 possessed in themselves of any moral, intellectual, or scientific 

 conscious powers ; — and are therefore merely natural agents of a 

 secondary class, in which such powers are exhibited. 



I proceed to consider the first of the foregoing propositions. 

 When we investigate the many and surprising instances in which 

 the operations of the brute creation imply moral intention, reflec- 

 tion, and contrivance, we are at no loss to account for the opinion 

 of that class of philosophers, who have attributed the mental 

 inferiority of brutes to the mere want of adequate bodily organs ; 

 nevertheless, the intellectual consciousness of man shrinks from 

 the acknowledgment that in one common principle of life originate 

 the actions of man and brute : and that brutes as to their mental 

 constitution are thus, as it were, " human imps lopt off from the 

 common stock of intellect and rationality." There is something 

 which seems powerfully to oppose the sentiment of sharing those 

 high endowments with creatures of so inferior a nature; and 

 which irresistibly leads us seriously to examine the arguments, 

 which may be offered to prove that moral and intellectual powers 

 reign over the conscious perception of the brute, and guide it to its 

 proper exercise of those lower faculties, which it is left in freedom 

 to use. The bee, we say, is a perfect political moralist, with 

 respect to its actions, which evince the strictest attention to the 

 principles of order and economy, for the purposes of the establish- 

 ment and preservation of a community ; yet it is totally ignorant 

 and unconscious of the very principles which it is so assiduous in 

 the practice of; — not a ray of moral perception or consciousness, 

 tan be attributed to it in a proper sense ; it is on the contrary 

 totally destitute of the means of discerning or reflecting upon the 

 nature or order of the ends it is instrumental in accomplishing, 

 through the medium of its subordinate voluntary perceptions and 

 powers. — Although it is in the habit of exercising the most accurate 



