CHAP. VI.] MAN. 183 



Surely from the latter, and, if so, we must consider not 

 structure, but action. 



Now in the last quoted passage Mr. Darwin seems to con 

 cede that a difference in kind would justify the placing of 

 man in a distinct kingdom, inasmuch as he says a difference 

 in degree does not so justify ; and we have no hesitation in 

 affirming (with Mr. Darwin) that between the instinctive 

 powers of the coccus and the ant there is but a difference 

 of degree, and that, therefore, they do belong to the same 

 kingdom, but we contend it is quite otherwise with man. 



Mr. Darwin, doubtless, admits that all the wonderful ac 

 tions of ants are mere modifications of instinct. But if it 

 were not so if the piercing of tunnels beneath rivers, &c., 

 were evidence of their possession of reason, then far from 

 agreeing with Mr. Darwin, we should say that ants also are 

 rational animals, and that, while considered from the ana 

 tomical stand-point they would be insects, from that of their 

 rationality they would rank together with men in a kingdom 

 apart of &quot; rational animals.&quot; Really, however, there is no 

 tittle of evidence that ants possess the reflective, self-con 

 scious, deliberate faculty; while the perfection of their in 

 stincts is a most powerful argument against the need of 

 attributing a rudiment of rationality to any brute whatever. 



Thus, then, we seem to have Mr. Darwin on our side when 

 we affirm that animals possessed of mental faculties Man forms a 



kingdom by 



distinct in kind should be placed in a kingdom himself. 

 apart. And man possesses such a distinction. 



Is this, however, all that can be said for the dignity of 

 his position? Is he merely one division of the visible 

 universe co-ordinate with the animal, vegetable, and mineral 

 kingdoms ? 



It would be so if he was intelligent and no more. If he 

 could observe the facts of his own existence, investigate the 

 co-existences and successions of phenomena, but all the time 

 remain like the other parts of the visible universe a mere 

 floating unit in the stream of time, incapable of one act of 

 free self-determination or one voluntary moral aspiration after 



