110 Transactions. — Miscellaneous. 



Thus I am unconvinced when the author describes " feehngs or mental 

 states" as being divided into "vivid" and "faint," tlie 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 feeHng. 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, and 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, 



