NATURAL VOICE. 185 



anterior to the exercise of what is usually called reason, 

 and by consequence independent of it. We need not, 

 therefore, seek for any explanation of it in the other 

 animals upon a principle of sagacity. Though the ewe 

 that has just dropped her first lamb may never have seen 

 a raven or any other offensive creature, or never heard 

 another ewe call her lamb, the cry is the very same as if 

 she had the longest experience even in the middle of the 

 most numerous flock, and had had her former progeny 

 destroyed by the very same assailer. When, too, the 

 tender invitation is given, there is no experience needed 

 on the part of the young one to the perfect understand- 

 ing of it. The little thing, while it has its legs almost 

 as thick as its body, and can hardly stand, totters 

 toward the mother whenever the inviting cry is heard. 

 And there is something more certain in this first voice 

 of nature, than in any thing into which reason and 

 design enter, and as it works with simple machinery, 

 and with more unerring certainty, we must assign it 

 the place of the higher power. It is, indeed, the 

 power to which the whole of animated nature is in sub- 

 jection, the guardian of the races of living things, 

 without which they would be destroyed in their helpless 

 stages. In the satisfying of their hunger many animals 

 are what we call cruel ; and in some which are at times 

 doomed to long fasts, we find what we call, in them, a 

 thirst for blood, (at the same time that we give man 

 credit for wisdom when he follows the same practice) ; 

 but in all cases where the young are, for any time, 

 however short, dependent upon the parent, we mark 

 nothing but fondness and attachment. When there is 

 no danger apparent, the lioness fondles her cubs, and 



