RELATION OF ANIMALS TO MAN. 5 



of appreciating its own existence, aiid much more, therefore, of feeling emotions of 

 pleasure and pain. To animals nature has given a present contentment, which is pur- 

 chased by ignorance ; but to men, who are endowed with reasoning powers, whose 

 nervous system has been so formed as to enable their mental operations, by processes 

 of memory, to reach over long periods of time, to combine together events which are 

 afar off, to decompose into their constituent parts phenomena that are complex, and to 

 trace each one of those parts up to its proper cause, knowledge has been given, and 

 the price of that knowledge is pain. 



14. So far as their intellectual powers are concerned, the life of animals, even oft ^v 

 those of the highest orders, is analogous to the dreamy sleep of man. Overcome by 

 the toils of the day, the weary labourer sinks into repose, and there come before him 

 pageants and scenery connected, to a certain extent, with the external world ; but of 

 that world he is wholly unconscious. Instead of the accustomed forms that he meets 



in his daily affairs, there spring up light aerial shapes and phantasms. From recesses 

 in the brain, where they have been long stored, and perhaps forgotten, the recol- 

 lection of landscapes that he has seen of old come forth ; he views the well-known 

 forms unfold themselves before him : there stands the aged oak, at the foot of which he 

 has so often watched the setting of the sun. and there is the pale-blue sky with its 

 gilded clouds, and in the distance the almost invisible mountains. That fairy panorama 

 has its shadowy tenants, which live, and move, and breathe : the dead are also there. 

 From those silent sepulchres which are within the brain, they rise again as living 

 things, and people the scenes they once loved. They converse with and counsel the 

 dreamer. 



15. As thus, during the night, these phantoms come up spontaneously before us, and 

 spontaneously disappear, and time, of which men gain a knowledge only by comparing 

 events, passes unnoticed away, we see to what a small e'xtent the will controls these 

 phenomena. The spectres come unbidden, and they as suddenly depart, and very 

 often, during one slumber, they change and rechange again, and memory, the arch- 

 conjuror, evokes scene after scene. 



16. With the brute creation the same thing holds. In their daily relations with ex- 

 ternal nature, almost all their functions are carried on by the promptings of instinct, or 

 in a mechanical \vay. So far as we can see, the current of thought seems to be little 

 under their control, and they have no power of effecting the collocation of ideas. They 

 cannot tell the passing of time, which flows away in its silent lapse, and leaves them, 

 as it found them, contented. Unaided by the instincts which are implanted in them, 

 they show but little power of reasoning from causes to effects, or from effects to causes. 

 Even in the most obvious cases, where actions are performed before them which, if 

 performed by themselves, might tend greatly to their enjoyment, they exhibit but a low 

 imitative power. Though he has often seen it done by man, the monkey has never 

 yet learned to make a fire. 



17. All objects which surround us, whether animate or inanimate, are marked by a 

 transitory nature. They come into existence, for a while they continue, and then they 

 pass away. It is thus that, in the course of ages, the configuration of continents and 



