6490 Reason and Instinct. 



Now, neither the weakness or comparative impotency of the will, 

 nor the infinite variety of degrees in mental endowment, are any 

 objection to our theory. We find parallels to both within the limits 

 of the human species. Thus, to speak only of mental endowment : 

 the variety, and the total distance between the first and lowest grada- 

 tion of mind and the last or highest among men, is neither greater 

 nor more startling than either the variety or the difference observ- 

 able in passing from the lowest to the highest brute animal. For 

 instance, compare Newton, not as Sir B. Brodie would do, with 

 what he would have been if born an Australian savage, nor even with 

 one of our London Bushmen, — but with many a member of not the 

 lowest or utterly uneducated classes of modern life, — with one of 

 those heavy, soulless, mindless labourers, whose features (caricatured 

 as they are in ' Punch') are yet but too easily recognised as the features 

 of a not scanty class among the labouring poor of this country ; — and 

 what a huge, almost fathomless, gulf there lies between them ! Every 

 one must have seen both children and adults, who seemed incapable 

 of mental culture beyond the merest rudiments ; to whom mental 

 effort was intolerably laborious, and, at the upshot and close of it all, 

 bore too strong a resemblance to the Mons parturiens of the fable. 

 While, on the other hand, to many, intellectual exertion is a delight 

 and a solace ; to a few, here and there, knowledge, discovery, inven- 

 tion, seem to come as if by inspiration. The abyss between these 

 extremes is deep, and beyond measure wide ; and yet, on either 

 side of it, stands the same human mind, working through different 

 specimens of the same human brain, and testifying in itself and 

 through itself — it may be with different degrees of energy, but with no 

 other difference — to the being of the human soul. The question, 

 " Why has God made man so ? " is one we cannot answer. We 

 cannot even make any real advance in the path towards answering it; 

 any more than we can towards answering this other question, "Why, 

 in such a sensible portion of the whole human race, no mental facul- 

 ties whatever, or certainly, the closest approximation to none, are 

 accorded or permitted to be exercised ? or why, in such a consider- 

 able proportion again, the mental faculties actually bestowed at birth, 

 and exercised through a given, perhaps a considerable, portion of life, 

 should be withdrawn, or obscured by lunacy or raving madness ?" 

 The facts only are there ; and startling, humbling facts they are. 



Somewhat similar considerations, moreover, may be advanced with 

 respect to the power of the will in the human race. Some there are 

 of u iron will," of irresistible powers of volition ; others again, even 



