INTRODUCTION. 31 



the idea of the primitive one, and modify the general rules framed 

 by intelligence this is prudence. 



From the application of these rules to general ideas, result cer- 

 tain formulae, which are afterwards easily adapted to particular cases 

 this is called reasoning. 



A lively remembrance of primitive and associated sensations, and 

 of the impressions of pleasure or pain that belong to them, consti- 

 tutes imagination. 



One privileged being, MAN, has the faculty of associating his gene- 

 ral ideas with particular images more or less arbitrary, easily im- 

 pressed upon the memory, and which serve to recal the general ideas 

 they represent. These associated images are styled signs; their 

 assemblage is a language. When the language is composed of 

 images that relate to the sense of hearing or of sounds, it is termed 

 speech, and when relative to that of sight, hieroglyphics. Writing 

 is a suite of images that relate to the sense of sight, by which we 

 represent the elementary sounds, and by combining them, all the 

 images relative to the sense of hearing of which speech is composed; 

 it is therefore only a mediate representation of ideas. 



Although, with respect to the intellectual faculties, the most per- 

 fect animals are infinitely beneath man; it is certain that their intel- 

 ligence performs operations of the same kind. They move in 

 consequence of sensations received, are susceptible of durable affec- 

 tions, and acquire by experience a certain knowledge of things, by 

 which they are governed independently of actual pain or pleasure, 

 and by the simple foresight of consequences. When domesticated, 

 they feel their subordination, know that the being who punishes them 

 may refrain from so doing if he will, and when sensible of having 

 done wrong, or behold him angry, they assume a suppliant and depre- 

 cating air. In the society of Man they become either corrupted or 

 improved, and are susceptible of emulation and jealousy: they have 

 among themselves a natural language, which, it is true, is merely the 

 expression of their momentary sensations, but Man teaches them to 

 understand another, much more complicated, by which he makes 

 known to them his will, and causes them to execute it. 



To sum up all, we perceive in the higher animals a certain degree 

 of reason, with all its consequences, good and bad, and which ap- 

 pears to be about the same as that of children ere they have learned 

 to speak. The lower we descend from Man the weaker these facul- 

 ties become, and at the bottom of the scale we find them reduced 



