3572 Reason and Instinct. 



intended by it is really no difficulty at all, either in the way of 

 natural or moral consideration. For, first, suppose the invidious 

 thing, designed in such a manner of expression, were really implied, 

 as it is not in the least in the natural immortality of brutes, viz. that 

 they must arrive at great attainments and become rational and moral 

 agents, even this would be no difficulty, since we know not what 

 latent powers and capacities they may be endued with. There was 

 once, prior to experience, as great presumption against human 

 creatures, as there is against the brute creatures, arriving at that 

 degree of understanding which we have in mature age ; for we can 

 trace up our own existence to the same original with theirs : and we 

 find it to be a general law of Nature that creatures, endued with 

 capacities of virtue and religion, should be placed in a condition of 

 being in which they are altogether without the use of them, for a con- 

 siderable length of their duration, as in infancy and childhood ; and 

 great part of the human species go out of the present world before 

 they come to the exercise of these capacities in any degree at all. 

 But then, secondly, the natural immortality of brutes does not in the 

 least imply that they are endued with any latent capacities of a 

 rational or moral nature ; and the economy of the universe must 

 require that there should be living creatures without any capacities 

 of this kind : and all difficulties as to the manner how they are to be 

 disposed of are so apparently and wholly founded in our ignorance, 

 that it is wonderful they should be insisted on by any but such as are 

 weak enough to think they are acquainted with the whole system of 

 things." 



Nor are these the only weighty arguments and considerations 

 which tend to establish the doctrine of the possession by the brute 

 creation of an immaterial principle; in other words, that the "spirit 

 of the beast" is really "a thing having existence," and in a sense 

 different from its mere present or visible life. The following remarks 

 (Prichard, ' Nat. Hist, of Man,' ii. 3) are very forcible: after ex- 

 patiating on the remarkable contrasts and resemblances (and par- 

 ticularly the latter) between mankind and the inferior tribes, he says, 

 "If it be enquired in what the still more remarkable difference con- 

 sists, it is by no means easy to reply. By some it will be said that 

 man, while similar in the organization of his body to the lower tribes, 

 is distinguished from them by the possession of an immaterial soul, a 

 principle capable of conscious feeling, of intellect and thought. To 

 many persons it will appear paradoxical to ascribe the endowment of 

 a soul to the inferior tribes in the creation. Yet it is difficult to dis- 



