Reason and Instinct, 557 3 



cover a valid argument that limits the possession of an immaterial 

 principle to man. The phenomena of feeling, of desire and aversion, 

 of love and hatred, of fear and revenge, and the possession of external 

 relations manifested in the life of brutes, imply, not only through the 

 analogy which they display to the human faculties, but likewise from 

 all we can learn or conjecture of their particular nature, the super- 

 added existence of a principle distinct from the mere mechanism of 

 material bodies. That such a principle must exist in all beings 

 capable of sensation, or of anything analogous to human passions and 

 feelings, will hardly be denied by those who perceive the force of 

 arguments which metaphysically demonstrate the immaterial nature 

 of the mind."* 



We assume it, then, as established that brutes are in possession of 

 an immaterial principle, a "spirit" or " soul," which is capable, at 

 least in a degree, " of conscious feeling, of intellect and thought ;" the 

 existence of which capacity we have found abundant reason for 

 recognising in some of the antecedent portions of our inquiry. It is 

 next for us to ascertain, if we can, whether this capacity is analogous 

 to the same capacity in man or identical with it. In Dr. Prichard's 

 view, "we may venture to conjecture that there may be immaterial 

 essences of divers kinds, and endowed with various attributes and 

 capabilities; but the real nature of these unseen principles eludes our 

 research. They are only known to us by their external manifestations. 

 These manifestations are the various powers and capabilities, or 

 rather the habitudes of action which characterize the different orders 

 of beings, diversified according to their several destinations." (Id. p. 3.) 

 Now these manifestations, considered simply as manifestations of im- 

 material principles, must of necessity, it would seem, be analogous to 

 the manifestations of that immaterial principle with which we are best 

 acquainted; that is to say, to our own mental proceedings, to the opera- 

 tions of our own intellectual attributes and capabilities. In fact, as 

 much as this is more than implied in our first quotation from Dr. Pri- 

 chard's admirable book. Bearing this analogy in mind, and rejecting 

 all those of the " various powers and capabilities or habitudes of action 



* The author goes on to say, with seeming inconsistency, " There may be no 

 rational grounds fov the ancient dogma that the souls of the lower animals were 

 imperishable, like the soul of man." The allusion probably is to the Pythagorean 

 doctrine of the metempsychosis. Certainly the idea of an immaterial principle or 

 essence, subject to the same laws of. decay and dissolution as matter itself, is one hard 

 to conceive, and little consistent with " the metaphysical arguments which demonstrate 

 the immateriality of the mind," or, rather, soul. 



