Quadrupeds. 907 



mentioned, viz., either that it is an inexplicable something, a sort of 

 knowledge supplied to animals for the moment, for their guidance, to 

 enable them to follow pleasurable objects and avoid pernicious ones, 

 or that they are involuntarily led to the performance of these actions 

 from the working of their various appetites and desires. Viewing the 

 matter in either way, it is clearly placing them on a level with " mere 

 machines" and denying them in the strongest degree any thing ap- 

 proaching to reason or intellect. 



The superiority, then, of reason to instinct, must be so very obvious 

 as scarcely to need a word in elucidation. The intellectual being 

 compared to the creature of mere instinct, is, if I may be allowed the 

 expression, an independent being, so far, at least, as any creature can 

 be independent. The former, endowed with the power of thinking 

 and willing, is enabled to admire and luxuriate in the beautiful world 

 in which he is placed, to indulge in pleasing recollection of the past 

 and hope for the future, whilst the latter, without any of these endow- 

 ments, is merely led to do this thing or that from the promptings of 

 appetite, and its life is much the same as that of the plant, which 

 expands its petals under the genial influence of the sun, and retracts 

 them when cold. Without the power of reflection or anticipation, it 

 cannot possibly derive any pleasure but from the gratifications of the 

 moment, and, under these circumstances, must be thoroughly incapa- 

 ble of assisting in the direction of its own movements. 



Having shortly stated the nature and qualifications of reason and 

 instinct respectively, I shall point out the reasons that appear to me 

 to constitute a probability that animals are endowed with the mental 

 and intellectual qualifications which I have previously described, and 

 that they are not the creatures of instinct alone, the "mere machines" 

 which so many would have them to be. 



The domestication of animals, whence arises their usefulness to 

 man, would. I believe, had they been entirely devoid of reason, have 

 been a moral impossibility. It is not from the force of habit, but by 

 convincing them, after repeated struggles, of the inferiority of their 

 powers to man's, that they allow themselves to be subjugated to his 

 yoke, and I contend that where there is no reason there can be no 

 conviction. Moreover, when we consider the finer feelings of the 

 heart, such as affection and gratitude (feelings that do honour to 

 human nature, and are, in my opinion, almost inseparable from intel- 

 lectual endowments), existing in the breast of animals, nay, existing 

 in a degree so strong as we seldom find even in the breast of man 

 himself, leading them, as can be proved from numerous well authen- 



