39 



luntary ideas," that so acute a writer, who had "done the 

 state good service" in exposing the dogmas of Aristotle, 

 Descartes, and Malebranche, commits himself by mani- 

 fest contradictions. Surely the very notion of a mind in 

 brutes, capable only of feeling, and of forming ideas requiring 

 to be qualified by the epithets little and confused, is pre- 

 posterous I Surely if an animal be conceived to have the 

 power of forming any idea at all he must be allowed the 

 power of forming a clear one ! Surely it is on the prccess 

 by which ideas are formed at all, that all ulterior and 

 higher phenomena of mind depend; and if an insect have 

 that power, and can institute that process he is in full pos- 

 session of a mind : and that mind must be a mind like our 

 own, for mind has no essential differences. Mind must be 

 intrinsically alike inall beings that possess it, and can differ 

 but in degree. To will, to judge, are the self same mental acts 

 in, biped or in quadruped. Confused ideas, moreover, if the 

 expression itself can be used without a solecism, could be 

 of no use whatever to the possessor. But take an instance. 

 Suppose an insect endeavours to escape before he is 

 touched -i.e., before the sensitive mind, conceded to him 

 by this author has been reached. Is it from fear? But 

 what mental acts does that emotion imply? to admit that 

 the insect fears, is in effect a full admission, as we have 

 seen, of its possessing that judgment and that u-ill which 

 he formally denies to them. Again, " Insects," he ob- 

 serves in another passage, "have not the rational mind, 

 have not the mind capable of containing the knowledge on 

 which sciences and arts are founded ; yet the spider's web, 

 the bee's cell, or the chrysalis' cocoon, are works con- 

 tinually under our eyes ! How do insects with confused 

 ideas, and only sensitive minds, make them ? In short a 

 purely sensitive mind, if the supposition were not absurd, 

 would be wholly inadequate to any of the wonders of in- 

 sect architecture. Their economy, their stratagems, or 



