beasts are equal to man in all things but religion : 

 the author of the article on instinct in the Encyclopedic, 

 avers, that to doubt whether beasts have feeling, were as 

 unreasonable as to question whether our fellow-creatures 

 feel : and another writer of the same nation, in a very 

 pleasing treatise on animals, alleges, that he can neither 

 have heart, nor ears, who does not comprehend, and is 

 not affected by those demonstrations of pain to which the 

 voices of hurt animals give utterance. But let all this be 

 ever so true, (and I enter not on that subject at all,) butter- 

 flies and beetles, spiders and cock-chafers, belong not to 

 those orders of intelligent creatures, which cheer our 

 dwellings, and attach us by affection. Rather annoyances 

 than otherwise in their familiarity, insects are neither like 

 the parrot whose education we undertake, the dog who is 

 dreaming at our feet, or the horse that is proud to carry 

 us ; and my concern, be it understood in all that is to 

 follow, is with insects only their supposed modicum of 

 mind, their sensibility, their instincts, or what not in 

 short the influence of their psychology, if they have any, 

 on the economy of their lives. 



Sir Charles Bell has, if I recollect, somewhere written, 

 that when a worm is cut in two, that portion of him 

 which carries his head, makes a decided effort to escape, 

 while the caudal part resigns itself without resistance to 

 its fate, that is, being interpreted, the half to which the 

 head is attached, being in possession of the brain, contains 

 all the energies of life, and all the capacity of suffering. 

 But what if a worm has no brain, or modification of brain ? 

 without which, what is the use of nerves ? for nerves in- 

 deed he has ; but what sort of thing is the nervous sys- 

 tem of insects, or what would any nervous system be 

 without a brain ? What right can such imperfect struc- 

 tures have, to be regarded as an organ of sensation ? for 

 as to the opinion that sensation is possible without nerves 

 at all, it appears to have been set up, by way of explaining 



