CHAPTER II. 



THE PRINCIPAL GENERA OF EXISTING ANIMALS. 



619. Man is an example of a reasoning being, and all the 

 principal forms of existing animals are combined in him, namely, 

 the insentient, the sensational, and the reasoning; he is also 

 capable of all the animal functions proper to these. 



620. The nature of a reasoning being implies the presence 

 of the natures of merely sensational and insentient animals, but 

 the last two do not necessarily require the former. There is a 

 great number of sentient but purely sensational beings, endowed 

 with neither understanding nor will; and even a reasoning being 

 may, by poisons or disease, or in the early periods of life, exist 

 only as a purely sensational animal, without any use of the 

 reason or the will, and usually capable only of those functions, 

 of which purely sensational and insentient animals are capable 

 (612—615). 



621. A sentient animal may be entirely deprived of its animal 

 sentient forces (for by separating the head from the body, the 

 brain and soul are removed), and yet may live for some time as 

 an insentient animal, and continue all those functions of which 

 as an insentient animal it is capable. But do true insentient 

 animals exist ? We will state the arguments for the affirma- 

 tive and negative, leaving the reader to decide. 



622. It is unquestionable that every animal does not require 

 to have a soul : the definition that an animal is a whole com- 

 pounded of soul and body is a petitio principiij for no one has 

 ever proved that a soul is requisite, and we therefore base one 

 false proposition upon another. Many eminent men have 

 doubted, whether unreasoning animals possess a soul; although 

 like others they have been educated in the dogma, that body and 

 soul constitute an animal. 



623. It is incontrovertible, that the nature of an insentient 

 animal can only be requisite to the existence and continuance 

 of an animal absolutely; firstly, because all the processes 



