GRADUATES IN MEDICINE. 327 



unconscious of itself. The so-called mental powers of the 

 animal are capacities and faculties excited only by corre- 

 sponding external objects, or by the recollection of these. Not 

 endowed, therefore, with independent powers, its acts are acts 

 predetermined for it, in the fundamental arrangement of its 

 entire economy, with a precision and to an extent exactly com- 

 mensurate with the conditions of its existence and welfare. 

 The animal has consequently no field allotted to it for the ex- 

 ercise of judgment, and can therefore commit no error, nor be 

 responsible for any act. 



In our human economy, on the other hand, we are not 

 only conscious of the material objects which surround us, but 

 we have, in addition, a consciousness, even more vivid, of our 

 conscious principle itself. We recognise in our economy, 

 moreover, not only certain capacities and faculties, the proper 

 ends, operations, and scope of which are directly predeter- 

 mined and arranged, as in the lower animals, for certain 

 essential requirements ; but we are conscious, in addition, of 

 beliefs, capacities, and faculties, the objects of which are in- 

 dicated, and their operations conditioned and regulated, by 

 the laws of the conscious principle itself. In virtue of the 

 endowments of this, his higher principle, man is enabled to 

 extend continuously his knowledge of the laws of external 

 nature, and his influence over her. From the same source he 

 derives his consciousness of the law of duty, and of that 

 liberty of action with which it is associated: hence also, 

 through free knowledge and moral liberty, the unassisted 

 human reason acquires the conviction of a supreme Lawgiver. 



You will now observe why it is that man is distinguished 

 In mi the lower animals by the comprehensiveness of the con- 

 ditions of his economy. In the case of the lower animal, (lie 

 means by which flu.' conditions of the welfare of its economy 

 are secured and adhered to are provided in its instincts. 

 Although man, again, has also had secured to him, through 



