190 LESSONS FROM NATUEE. [CHAP. VI. 



g ences that the dead body before us had been in life endowed 

 with an activity not merely animal but intellectual, so that 

 man s mind was an active intelligence like our own if, in 

 other words, we understood that the difference between him 

 and all other animals was not a difference of degree but of kind 

 if we could be made to understand that its vast power of col 

 lecting and grouping sensible images served but to supply its 

 intellectual activity with materials whereby it might perceive 

 not merely sensible phenomena, but also abstract qualities of 

 objects if we became aware that the sounds uttered by it in 

 life were not exclusively emotional expressions, but were the 

 external signs of general conceptions, then the aspect of the 

 question would be entirely altered for us. If we further 

 came to know that the being we were considering had been 

 endowed with the marvellous gift of free-will, by which his 

 intelligence could interrupt and dominate the vast chain 

 of merely physical causation, we should then surely con 

 clude that as that activity and the acting body together 

 formed but one unity, and as that intellectual activity was 

 not only different in kind from that displayed by any other 

 animal but indefinitely more different from the activity of 

 the highest brute than the activity of the highest brute is 

 different from that of the lowest for these reasons we should 

 conclude that man s origin was different in kind from theirs. 



The lesson then concerning man, which we seem to gather 

 from nature as revealed to us in our own conscious 

 ness and as externally observed, is that man differs 

 fundamentally from every other creature which presents 

 itself to our senses. That he differs absolutely, and therefore 

 differs in origin also. Although a strict unity, one material 

 whole with one form, or force (not made of two parts mutually 

 acting according to the vulgar notion of soul and body), yet 

 he is seen to be a compound unity in which two distinct 

 orders of being unite. 



He is manifestly &quot; animal,&quot; with the reflex functions, feel 

 ings, desires, and emotions of an animal. Yet equally mani 

 fest is it that he has a special nature &quot; looking before and 



