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32 A n Inquiry respecting the true nature of Instinct. 



perception, received from the Source of all Being; the conscious- 

 ness of which influence connects him more immediately with that 

 Source ; — and that the absence of freedom in the brute mind, in 

 this respect, forms the basis of its irrationality, and demonstrates 

 that the influent light and perception which gives birth to the 

 surprising actions we see animals perform, forms no part of their 

 conscious nature. Thus brutes are evidently connected with the 

 Author of Creation, though in a manner more remote than man. 



The freedom of man consists in his being able to take a survey 

 from an eminence, as it were, of the various discriminations which 

 he himself effects, and which, by various agencies, are effected 

 throughout lower existence; hence, although man possesses a 

 lower or animal mind, similar, as considered distinctly and by 

 itself, to the brute mind, and which inferior mind or region he 

 looks down upon from an intellectual eminence, it is evident that 

 his consciousness respecting even the things of this inferior 

 region is illumined, by the glorious light of intellect and ration- 

 ality which is proper to him'. The brute, on the contrary, does 

 not survey from an elevated sphere the discriminatioirs which he 

 himself effects, 1101 those of nature which are in operation around 

 him ; although these discriminations, as effected by himself and 

 by the other subjects of creation around him, are calculated to 

 lead him on in the road of analysis, did he but possess the 

 proper faculty. May we not then infer, — That intellectual and 

 scientific qualities do not become objective in the minds of 

 brutes ; or, that the intellectual and scientific actions which 

 they perform, are not reflected upon or contrived by them as 

 such ; thus that they possess no intellectual or scientific con- 

 sciousness, and consequently that no intellectual or scientific 

 design can be attributed to them ; and therefore that so much 

 of intellectual or scientific design as appears conspicuous in 

 their actions, must be the effect of intellectual and scientific 

 powers or energies, acting upon them in a region of their minds 

 above the sphere of their proper consciousness ? 



