INTRODUCTION. 41 



serves to beget contempt, both for the original and the 

 portrait. Our oldest writers, with whom every thing 

 vile and base is doglike, are full of this imagery. Even 

 the sacred writings, abounding in the sublimest precepts 

 of humanity, have added their share to this metaphoric 

 disparagement. Trifling as this may appear, these figu- 

 rative comparisons, however erroneous, sink deep in 

 many minds, and beget a traditional contempt and ill- 

 will towards one of the most valuable parts of the cre- 

 ation. To combat these popular sources of inhuma- 

 nity, I have before observed, no means seem so well 

 calculated as to place the subject of our inquiry in his 

 true light, by raising him from the debasement of a mere 

 instinctive machine to the elevation of an intellectual 

 being. 



There are so many proofs that the dog is a rational 

 animal, that it affords matter of surprise that any think- 

 ing mind should, for a moment, doubt it. Most of out 

 ablest philosophers and metaphysicians have allowed 

 him this distinction; but the extent of his reasoning 

 powers has occasioned great diversity of opinion 

 among them. Much, if not all, of this discordance 

 has arisen for want of a precise idea of that inherent 

 property we name instinct, under which general term it 

 has been too common with writers to hide the pheno- 

 mena of reason^"-. It is foreign to my present purpose. 



3* Dr. Fleming states, that this discrepancy and confusion would 

 cease, if we confined instinct to the movements of those powers of 

 the mind termed active, which are usually considered to consist of 

 appetites, desires, and affections. Reason, he argues, should own 

 those phenomena that are purely intellectual.— PAeZ. ofZool, vol. i, 



p. 241. 



This would appear a just and philosophic definition of the subject, 

 were appetites and desires only included : affections are, many of 

 Ihem, purely intellectual. 



D 



