MENTAL CONSTITUTION OF ANIMALS. 243 



in a peculiar stage of development ; and though the fact were 

 otherwise, it could not aft'ect the conclusion, that manifesta- 

 tions such as have been enumerated are mainly intellectual 

 manifestations, not to be distinguished as such from those of 

 human beings. 



More than this, the lower animals manifested mental phe- 

 nomena long before man existed. While as yet there was 

 no brain capable of working out a mathematical problem, the 

 economy of the six sided figure was exemplified by the in- 

 stinct of the bee. The dog and the elephant prefigured the 

 sagacity of the human mind. The love of a human mother 

 for her babe was anticipated by nearly every humbler mam- 

 mal, the carnaria not excepted. The peacock strutted, the 

 turkey blustered, and the cock fought for victory, just as 

 human beings afterwards did, and still do. Our faculty of 

 imitation, on which so much of our amusement depends, was 

 exercised by the mocking-bird ; and the whole tribe of mon- 

 keys must have walked about the pre-human world, playing 

 off those tricks in which we see the comicality and mischief- 

 making of our character so curiously exaggerated. 



The unity and simplicity which characterize nature give 

 great antecedent probability to what observation seems about 

 to establish, that, as the brain of the vertebrata generally is 

 only an advanced condition of a particular ganglion in the 

 mollusca and Crustacea, so are the brains of the higher and 

 more intelligent mammalia only further developments of the 

 brains of the inferior orders of the same class. Or, to the 

 same purpose, it may be said, that each species has certain 

 superior developments, according to its needs, while others 

 are in a rudimental or repressed state. This will more clearly 

 appear after some inquiry has been made into the various 

 powers comprehended under the term mind. 



One of the first and simplest functions of mind is to give 

 consciousness consciousness of our identity and of our ex- 

 istence. This, apparently, is independent of the senses, 

 which are simply media, and, as Locke has shown, the only 

 media, through which ideas respecting the external world 

 reach the brain. The access of such ideas to the brain is 



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