14.6 Human Physiology. 



And one might say O that I had the keen senses and infalli- 

 ble instincts of many animals. But the intellectual and moral 

 powers of man are a thousand-fold compensation. One opera 

 or oratorio surpasses all songs of birds since the creation ; one 

 picture, or statue, or poem, all works of insect, of animal. 



Animals have some power of communicating with each other, 

 by which one receives, probably in a very direct sympathetic 

 way, the other's sensations. Man has himself this power of clair- 

 voyant intuition very remarkably in some cases ; but the animals 

 have nothing to compare with human languages, embodying 

 the thoughts and feelings of all peoples and ages. Nor can it 

 be seen that animals, even the highest, possess any rudiments 

 of human speech. The elephant understands his keeper, but 

 he does not learn his language as we learn French or German, 

 by slow degrees and with effort. He understands from the 

 first, and without regard to the language in which his com- 

 mands are given. Elephants, dogs, and horses, are not gram- 

 matical, but intuitional ; and understand men, when in sympathy 

 with them, as they understand each other, by a consciousness 

 of their thoughts or sensations. 



The life of man has a still higher range. There is no indica- 

 tion that the most intelligent animal has any conception of God 

 or immortality. Men, as far back as we know of them, have 

 believed in Superior Beings, and expected to enjoy existence 

 after death. The mind of man, his conceptions, his aspirations, 

 his faith, and his hope, are satisfied with nothing less than 

 belief in a Supreme Being and in his own immortality. Either 

 those ideas were revealed to man by some higher intelligence, 

 or they originated in himself in either case they are a part of 

 his life. His mind is so formed that he could accept such 

 ideas when given to him, as we accept every truth, when it is 

 adapted to our perceptions, or that he could conceive them t>y 

 his own intuitions, or admit them by his reasoning powers as 

 logical necessities. In whatever way man came by the funda- 



