NATURAL HISTORY OF CREATION. 247 



Common observation sliows a great general superiority 

 of the liuman mind over that of the inferior animals. 

 Man's mind is almost infinite in device ; it ranges over 

 all the world ; it forms the most wonderful combinations ; 

 it seeks back into the past, and stretches forward into 

 the future ; while the animals generally appear to have 

 a narrow range of thought and action. But so also has 

 an infant but a Kmited range, and yet it is mind which 

 works there, as well as in the most accomplished adults. 

 The difference beiween mind in the lower animals and in 

 man is a difference in degree . only ; it is not a specific 

 difference. All who have studied animals by actual 

 observation, and even those who have given a candid 

 attention to the subject in books, must attain more or 

 less clear convictions of this truth, notwithstanding all 

 the obscurity which prejudice may have engendered. 

 We see animals capable of aflection, jealousy, envy ; we 

 see them quarrel, and conduct quarrels in the very 

 manner pursued by the ruder and less educated of our 

 own race. We see them liable to flattery, inflated with 

 pride, and dejected by shame. We see them as tender 

 to their young as human parents are, and as faithful to 

 a trust as the most conscientious of human servants. 

 The horse is startled by marvellous objects, as a man is. 

 The dog and many others show tenacious memory. The 

 dog also proves himself possessed of imagination, by the 

 act of dreaming. Horses, finding themselves in want of 

 a shoe, have of their own accord gone to a farrier's shop 

 where they were shod before. Cats, closed up in rooms, 



sumcd to have a rapidity equal to one hundred and ninety-two 

 thousand miles in the second — a rate evidently far beyond what is 

 necessary to make the design and execution of any of our ordinary 

 muscular movements apparently identical in point of time, which 

 they are. 



