MENTAL CONSTITUTION OF ANIMALS. 247 



that he may be ready to act well in all imaginable cases. His 

 commission, it may be said, gives large discretionary powers, 

 while that of the inferior animals is limited to a few precise 

 directions. But when the human brain is congenitally im- 

 perfect or diseased, or when it is in a state of infancy, we see 

 in it an approach towards the character of the brains of some 

 of the inferior animals. Dr. J. G. Davey states that he has 

 frequently witnessed, among his patients at the Hanwell 

 Lunatic Asylum, indications of a particular abnormal cere- 

 bration which forcibly reminded him of the specific healthy 

 characteristics of animals lower in the scale of organiza- 

 tion ;( 100 ) and every one must have observed how often the 

 actions of children, especially in their moments of play, and 

 where their selfish feelings are concerned, bear a resemblance 

 to those of certain familiar animals. Behold, then, the won- 

 derful unity of the whole system. The grades of mind, like 

 the forms of being, are mere stages of development. In the 

 humbler forms, only a few of the mental faculties are traceable, 

 just as we see in them but a few of the lineaments of universal 

 structure. In man the system has arrived at its highest con- 

 dition. The fe\v gleams of reason, then, which we see in the 

 lower animals, are precisely analogous to such a development 

 of the fore-arm as we find in the paddle of the whale. 

 Causality, comparison, and other of the nobler faculties, are 

 in them rudimentaL 



Bound up as we thus are by an identity in the character of 

 our mental organization with the lower animals, we are yet, 

 it will be observed, strikingly distinguished from them by 

 this great advance in development. We have faculties in full 

 force and activity which the animals either possess not at all, 

 or in so low and obscure a form as to be equivalent to non- 

 existence. Now these parts of mind are those which connect 

 us with the things that are not of this world. We have 

 veneration, prompting us to the worship of the Deity, which 

 the animals lack. We have hope, to carry us on in thought 

 beyond the bounds of time. We have reason, to enable us to 

 inquire into the character of the Great Father, and the rela- 

 tion of us, his humble creatures, towards him. We have con- 



