CHAP. XXIV. man's improvable REASON. 497 



always be accurately separated from instinct, but from that 

 power of progressive and improvable reason which is Man's 

 l^eculiar and exclusive endowment. 



" It has been sometimes alleged, and may be founded on 

 fact, that there is less difference between the highest brute 

 animal and the lowest savage than between the savage and 

 the most improved JMan. But, in order to warrant the pre- 

 tended analogy, it ought to be also true that this loAvest 

 savage is no more capable of improvement than the Chim- 

 panzee or Orang-outang. 



''Animals," he adds, " are born what they are intended to 

 remain. Xature has bestowed upon them a certain rank, 

 and limited the extent of their capacity by an impassable 

 decree. Man she has empowered and obliged to become the 

 artificer of his own rank in the scale of beings by the j^ecu- 

 liar gift of improvable reason."* 



We have seen that Professor Agassiz, in his Essay on 

 Classification, above cited (p. 494), speaks of the existence in 

 every animal of '■'■ an immaterial principle similar to that 

 which, by its excellence and superior endowments, places 

 man so much above animals;" and he remarks "that most 

 of the arguments of philosophy in favor of the immortality 

 of man apply equally to the permanency of this principle in 

 other living beings." 



Although the author has no intention by this remark to 

 impugn the truth of the great doctrine alluded to, it may be 

 well to observe, that if some of the arguments in favor of a 

 future state are applicable in common to man and the lower 

 animals, they are by no means those which are the weightiest 

 and most relied on. It is no doubt true that, in both, the 

 identity of the individual outlasts many changes of form 

 and structure which take place during the passage from the 



* Records of Creation, vol. ii. chap. ii. 2d ed. 1816. 



