MENTAL CONSTITUTION OF ANIMALS. 239 



minate kind and amount, and thus occasion a certain periodical 

 amount of loss which the association must make up. 



This statistical regularity in moral affairs fully establishes 

 their being under the presidency of law. Man is seen to be 

 an enigma only as an individual ; in the mass he is a mathe- 

 matical problem. It is hardly necessary to say, much less to 

 argue, that mental action, being proved to be under law, 

 passes at once into the category of natural things. Its old 

 metaphysical character vanishes in a moment, and the dis- 

 tinction usually taken between physical and moral is 

 annulled. This view agrees with what all observation teaches, 

 that mental phenomena flow directly from the brain. They 

 are seen to be dependent on naturally constituted and naturally 

 conditioned organs, and thus obedient, like all other organic 

 phenomena, to law. And how wondrous must the constitu- 

 tion of this apparatus be, which gives us consciousness of 

 thought and of affection, which makes us familiar with the 

 numberless things of earth, and enables us to rise in concep- 

 tion and communion to the councils of God himself! It is 

 matter which forms the medium or instrument a little mass 

 which, decomposed, is but so much common dust ; yet in its 

 living constitution, designed, formed, and sustained by Al- 

 mighty Wisdom, how admirable its character ! how reflective 

 of the unutterable depths of that Power by which it was so 

 formed, and is so sustained ! 



In the mundane economy, mental action takes its place as a 

 means of providing for the independent existence and the 

 various relations of animals, each species being furnished 

 according to its special necessities and the demands of its 

 various relations. The nervous system the more compre- 

 hensive term for its organic apparatus is variously developed 

 in different classes and species, and also in different indi- 

 viduals, the volume or mass bearing a general relation to the 

 amount of power. Passing over the humblest orders, where 

 nervous apparatus is so obscure as hardly to be traceable, we 

 see it in the nematoneura of Owen,( 9: ) in filaments and 

 nuclei, the mere rudiments of the system. In the articulata, 

 it is advanced to a double nervous cord, with ganglia or little 



