CHAP. xxiv. MAN'S IMPROVABLE REASON. 497 



always be accurately separated from instinct, but from that 

 power of progressive and improvable reason, which is Man's 

 peculiar and exclusive endowment. 



' It has been sometimes alleged, and may be founded on 

 fact, that there is less difference between the highest brute 

 animal and the lowest savage than between the savage and 

 the most improved Man. But, in order to warrant the pre 

 tended analogy, it ought to be also true that this lowest 

 savage is no more capable of improvement than the Chim 

 panzee or Orang-outang. 



' Animals,' he adds, ' are born what they are intended to 

 remain. Nature has bestowed upon them a certain rank, 

 and limited the extent of their capacity by an impassible 

 decree. Man she has empowered and obliged to become the 

 artificer of his own rank in the scale of beings by the peculiar 

 gift of improvable reason.' * 



We have seen that Professor Agassiz, in his Essay on Classi 

 fication, above cited (p. 494), speaks of the existence in every 

 animal of ( an immaterial principle similar to that which, by 

 its excellence and superior endowments, places man so much 

 above animals ; ' and he remarks, ' that most of the arguments 

 of philosophy in favour of the immortality of man, apply 

 equally to the permanency of this principle in other living 

 beings.' 



Although the author has no intention by this remark to 

 impugn the truth of the great doctrine alluded to, it may be 

 well to observe, that if some of the arguments in favour of a 

 future state are applicable in common to man and the lower 

 animals, they are by no means those which are the weightiest 

 and most relied on. It is no doubt true that, in both, the 

 identity of the individual outlasts many changes of form 

 and structure which take place during the passage from the 



* Records of Creation, vol. ii. chap. ii. 2nd ed. 1816. 

 K K 



