Reason and Instinct. 2335 



endowed, in any degree, with reason, they have been so endowed 

 from the first ; and our admission that such is the fact in no wise in- 

 terferes to alter their grade in the general scale of Nature. When they 

 were created they were placed at a certain distance below man, him- 

 self made " a little lower than the angels; " and nothing whatever — 

 least of all accurate knowledge concerning their nature and attributes 

 — can ever raise them nearer to the human standard than they were 

 originally placed. Let not, then, our objectors be apprehensive lest 

 we should raise the brutes too near the human Vantage-ground of in- 

 tellect, even if we contend that some of them at least, and under 

 certain circumstances, may be fairly and reasonably proved to be 

 possessed of something besides their instinct, — something that is 

 more than Instinct, but scarcely less than Reason. Let them rather 

 fear lest by neglecting or refusing to exercise their intellectual attri- 

 butes properly, or by the undue indulgence of their faculties that are 

 not intellectual, they should lower — not the whole human race, but — 

 themselves in the scale of Nature, and in this way lessen the vast dif- 

 ference which the All-wise has placed between man, whose " spirit 

 goeth upward," and the beast, " whose spirit goeth downward to the 

 earth." 



It is no new theory that the brute creation are endowed, in some 

 degree or other, with the gift of Reason. Some, we know, have even 

 gone so far as to assign to them the possession of undying souls, — 

 partly, as it seems to me, out of a total misconception of words and 

 passages in the apostolical writings, and partly out of what seems lit- 

 tle better than a visionary conceit. But, passing this by without fur- 

 ther notice (for the present at least), we may remark, that among those 

 who have given it as their opinion that brutes are capable of reason- 

 ing, we find one or two of the acutest intellects and soundest judg- 

 ments that ever shed lustre on their time and race. I refer particularly 

 to Locke, the great author of the l Essay on the Human Under- 

 standing ' and other admirable metaphysical and philosophical works. 

 These are his words : " It seems as evident to me that some of them" 

 — that is, of the brutes — " do in certain instances reason, as that they 

 have sense ; but it is only in particular ideas, just as they received 

 them from the senses. They are the best of them tied up within nar- 

 row bounds, and have not, as I think, the faculty to enlarge them by 

 any kind of abstraction."— (' Essay on the Human Understanding,' 

 Book ii. ch. 11). Again, the author of the ' Natural History of Ani- 

 mals ' goes even further than this. He contends, that their " natural 

 operations are performed with a view to consequences ; " that they are 



