18 An Inquiry respecting 



the animal to have reflected upon the deed of slaughter he had 

 committed as wrong, nor upon the act of atonement or reconcilia- 

 tion as right, without making him an accountable agent ; there 

 are, however, the strongest possible features of right and wrong, 

 in the two acts and their attendant circumstances, which must 

 unquestionably belong to an agency above the proper conscious- 

 ness of the creature. For we have here a case of moral exigency, 

 and also of reasoning and intellectual exigency; — so much of moral 

 and intellectual motive adapted to the circumstances and moral re- 

 quirement of the case, that if the cause principal be referred to any 

 power within the consciousness of the creature, we must inevitably 

 pronounce it to be a moral and intellectual being. But surely we 

 shall not assert this from the mere appearance of the thing, and 

 without reference to the general quality of the animal's nature ewer 

 whole, which clearly, and for the reasons I have already dwelt 

 upon, marks its limit, and designates it to be neither moral nor 

 intellectual as to its proper consciousness ; — thus not at all so in it- 

 self, but only apparently so, by being acted upon by some power 

 or agency above the stream of its consciousness ; and which agency 

 must unquestionably be of a moral and intellectual character, or it 

 never could impel the animal to the exercise of those powers of 

 which it is conscious, in the performance of actions possessing the 

 strongest possible moral characteristics. 



If brutes then are incapable of viewing moral qualities objectively, 

 and reflecting upon them as such, they must necessarily be desti- 

 tute of that perception of moral differences, with which the power 

 of exercising their moral sagacity must be connected ; moral saga- 

 city, therefore, cannot exist at all in them otherwise than appa- 

 rently ; and this conclusion is exactly what a candid estimation of 

 brute powers seems to lead to ; namely, that they are actuated by 

 moral energies of which they are not conscious, and which there- 

 fore are not properly theirs; and that these energies operating 

 upon their proper conscious perceptions — which may be termed 

 natural perceptions to distinguish them from those which are moral 

 and intellectual,— furnish the motive principles which serve to in- 

 duce them to apply their conscious powers in a certain manner ; — 

 thus producing what is apparently moral in them, .without their 



