110 Transactions,— Miscellaneous. 
Thus I am unconvinced when the author describes “ feelings or mental 
states” as being divided into ‘‘ vivid’ and ‘‘ faint,” the former being 
‘‘ emotions,”’ the other “ideas.” On the contrary, my study of the subject 
has led me to conclude that these attributes are not similar, and only 
differing by degree of power, but opponent, though essential. And to the 
ideal part of man’s nature I give incomparably the higher place. It is by 
his ideal or ethereal nature that man weighs the sun as it were in a balance; 
that he predicts by many years the positions of the stars in the heavens; 
that he anticipates eclipses and other astronomical phenomena; that he 
scientifically navigates the great ocean, and that he by his designs overcomes 
space and time by the railway and electric telegraph. Thus man is gifted 
with an attribute far outside of gross narrow feeling, as truthful and 
transcendent in its comprehensiveness as the latter is misleading and mis- 
guiding. Hence there is objectiveness and idealization or mental concep- 
tion attached to man’s life, the former being that function of the feelings 
which makes us accept as actual what is only apparent and inaccurate, 
while the latter is that function of the mind which enables us to comprehend 
what we arrive at by processes of abstract study, thought, deliberation, or 
consideration, entirely apart from feeling. This gift of mental conception 
places man in his pre-eminent position in nature, and is that ethereal part 
of his being which being truthful is undying and immortal. 
Mr. Frankland describes man as believing his fellow-creatures to be 
conscious beings, while that the higher animals are sentient. It is difficult 
for me to guess the particular import he gives to these words, but I may 
suggest that he takes the former as being the power of reflection, the latter 
the power of perception. If so, to my mind these terms are not so appro- 
priate as the orthodox ones—i.e., reason and instinct. It is true that 
reason and instinct approach at times so closely that we cannot know where 
the one begins and the other ends, for some of the higher animals show 
a sagacity which makes it hardly possible to deny them some of the 
attributes, however small, of reason. Yet that the higher animals are only 
sentient I think is not consistent with correct observation, for even the 
lowest creatures must be admitted to have perceptions of a kind due to 
their varied wants and habits. In this manner even the worms have per- 
ception, and hence are sentient. To my mind, therefore, the orthodox and 
approved terms are yet the best—i.e., reason and instinct. The material 
difference between man and beast is that the former stands erect on two 
feet ; the ethereal difference is that having reason man can restrain him- 
self, ed in so restraining himself he can record and bear to record his 
actions, and in recording his actions he can take praise or blame, and in 
praising and blaming he reasons, And his reason, an ethereal attribute, 
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