5460 Reason and Instinct, 



comparing which may be observed in men, belonging to general ideas, 

 and useful only to abstract reasonings, we may probably conjecture 

 beasts have not." 



IV. " The next operation we may observe in the mind about its 

 ideas is composition, whereby it puts together several of those simple 

 ones it has received from sensation and reflection, and combines them 

 into complex ones. * * In this also I suppose brutes come far short 

 of man. For though they take in and retain together several combi- 

 nations of simple ideas — as possibly the shape, smell and voice of his 

 master make up the complex idea a dog has of him, or rather are so 

 many distinct marks whereby he knows him — yet I do not think they 

 do of themselves ever compound them and make complex ideas." 



V. The fifth power or faculty of the mind "is called abstraction, 

 whereby ideas taken from particular beings become general represen- 

 tatives of all of the same kind ; and their names general names appli- 

 cable to whatever exists conformable to such abstract ideas. * * If it 

 may be doubted whether beasts compound and enlarge their ideas that 

 way, to any degree : this I think I may be positive in, that the power 

 of abstracting is not at all in them, and that the having of general 

 ideas is that which puts a perfect distinction betwixt man and brutes, 

 and is an excellency which the faculties of brutes do by no means 

 attain to. For it is evident we observe no footsteps in them of making 

 use of general signs for universal ideas: from which we have reason 

 to imagine that they have not the faculty of abstracting or making 

 general ideas, since they have no use of words or other general signs. 

 * * And I think we may suppose that it is in this that the species of 

 brutes are discriminated from man ; and 'tis that proper difference 

 wherein they are wholly separated, and which at last widens to so vast 

 a distance. For if they have any ideas at all, and are not bare 

 machines (as some would have them) we cannot deny them to have 

 some reason. It seems as evident to me that they do, some of them, 

 in certain instances, reason, as that they have sense : but it is only in 

 particular ideas, just as they received them from their senses. They 

 are, the best of them, tied up within those narrow bounds, and 

 have not (as I think) the faculty to enlarge them by any kind of 

 abstraction." 



I have thought it best to quote the remarks of the great original 

 thinker thus in extenso, but, insfead of making a running commentary 

 on them in due sequence, I purpose to examine and possibly demur 

 to the correctness of what has been said under the last head. Because, 

 if it can be shown that brutes, or some of them, do actually possess 



