ALLEGED DIFFERENCES. 101 



The chief alleged distinctive psychical or other attributes of 

 man as compared with lower animals are, or include, the 

 following: 



1. It is alleged at the very outset that the possession of 

 a soul or spirit places man on a platform by himself. I have 

 already explained (in the Introduction) my reasons for not 

 discussing, in the present volume, the subject of soul and 

 its immortality in the lower animals. In so far as soul is to 

 be held to be that part of man's nature which is destined 

 to exist in a future, any discussion of the question whether 

 such an attribute pertains to other animals must be purely 

 speculative, and unsuitable therefore in a work which pro- 

 fesses to deal only with the facts of observation, and with 

 scientific or logical inferences from these facts. In man 

 himself the existence of soul, with the probability or cer- 

 tainty of its immortality, is a matter of faith or belief, not 

 of scientific demonstration. By no kind of scientific evidence 

 can it be proved that soul exists, whether in man or other 

 animals. And as regards belief and hope, there are, and 

 have been, many eminent authors, including divines or theo- 

 logians themselves, who have expressed their opinion that 

 certain other animals, such as dogs, may have souls, which 

 may further be immortal, just as is man's. No man is, 

 therefore in a position to assert absolutely that the presence 

 or absence of a soul characterises either man or other 

 animals. Nor should it be forgotten that, according to 

 many writers, the word or term ' soul ' is regarded as 

 synonymous with 'mind;' in which case there can be no 

 question as to its possession by the higher animals ; while 

 the term 'soul' has also been applied in figurative senses 

 no doubt even to plants. It obviously lies with those who 

 assert dogmatically that all men have immortal souls, while 

 no animals possess them, to reconcile with such a conviction 

 the provable fact that many animals are superior to many 

 men, not only in general intelligence, but as regards also 

 moral sense and religious feeling. 



2. The subject of immortality the knowledge of or 

 belief in a future destiny or state of existence is inse- 

 parably connected with the question of soul. Now, in the 



