382 CLASS MAMMALIA. 



the mind of man, springs to maturity, and bears fruit pro- 

 portioned to its natural soil and to the artificial cultivation 

 bestowed upon it. 



Gradation is a most prevalent principle in the great 

 scheme of creation: the three material kingdoms of nature, 

 however remote their extremes, have points of close con- 

 tiguity, if not of actual contact : the immaterial world ap- 

 pears in this respect to be very analogous to the material. 

 The human subject, lowest in intellectual cultivation, if we 

 regard him for a moment as he really is, abstracted from 

 his capability of improvement, which in fact alone forms 

 his real superiority, is very little, if at all, above the highest 

 intellectual quadruped. We may then trace intellect, how- 

 ever restricted in development as it passes, diminishing in 

 degree through the whole of the encephalous animals : these 

 fall into that division of the animal kingdom in which the 

 medullary substance, no longer concentrated, is divided into 

 portions, or spread throughout the system ; and in such the 

 co-existence of intellect with mere sensation is uncertain, 

 until at last it becomes evident, as in the zoophytes, that 

 nothing but sensation is left, and we may well doubt whe- 

 ther even sensation can exist in matter without something 

 like an immaterial connexion. From these sensation ceases, 

 but the living principle glides off into the vegetable king- 

 dom, in which it is as strong as in the animal. Sensation, 

 indeed, must be considered to be the lowest state of intellect, 

 which seems to quit the creatures of this world in the semi- 

 vegetable zoophytes. 



The real difference between brute reason and human does 

 not appear to us to be in kind, but in the capability afforded 

 to the latter and denied to the former. The elephant that 

 had a reasonable knowledge that a current of air would 

 move a comparatively light body, and that a sudden re- 

 sistance would cause the same current to turn in a contrary 

 direction from that which was at first given it, went as far 



