2o6 Address to the Bintish Association 



identity are necessarily exposed to the temptation referred 

 to. Of course, persons who desire to disprove this identity 

 are exposed to the opposite temptation; but it cannot be 

 maintained that there is evidence of Buffon having been 

 influenced by any such desire. 



The obvious differences between the highest powers of 

 man and animals have led the common-sense of mankind to 

 consider them to be of radically distinct kinds, and the 

 question which naturalists now profess to investigate is 

 whether this is so or not. 



But we may doubt whether many who enter upon this 

 inquiry do not enter upon it with their minds already made 

 up that no such radical difference can by any possibility 

 exist. To admit it, they think, would be tantamount to 

 admitting some non-natural origin of man, to accepting as a 

 fact something not harmonising with our views as to nature 

 generally, leading to we know not what results. To admit it, 

 would be to deny the principle of continuity. There cannot, 

 therefore, be any essential difference between man and brute, 

 and their mental powers must be the same in kmd. This, 

 I think, is no unfau' representation of the state of mind in 

 which this question is very likely to be entered upon at the 

 present time. Surely, however, if Ave profess to investigate a 

 question, we ought in honesty to beUeve that there is a 

 question to investigate, or else leave the matter to others; 

 and if evidence should seem to show that ' intellect ' cannot 

 be analysed into sense, but is an ultimate, it ought to be 

 accepted, at the least provisionally, as such, even at the cost 

 of having to regard its origin as at present inexplicable. 

 Can we explain the origin of ' motion ' ? But what rational 

 man thinks of denying it on that account ? Let us not reject 

 anything, then, which may be evident, on account of certain 

 supposed speculative consequences. 



But that no such consequences as those referred to need 



