Reason and Instinct. 5539 



brute creation with a very considerable degree of suspicion, and look 

 on every compliment which is paid to the ape as high treason to the 

 dignity of man. There may perhaps be more of rashness and of ill- 

 fated security in my opinion, than of magnanimity or of liberality ; but 

 I confess I feel myself so much at my ease about the superiority of 

 mankind — I have such a marked and decided contempt for the under- 

 standing of every baboon I have ever seen — I feel so sure that the 

 blue ape without a tail will never rival us in poetry, painting and 

 music, that I see no reason whatever that justice may not be done to 

 the few fragments of soul and tatters of understanding which they may 

 really possess. I have sometimes perhaps felt a little uneasy at Exeter 

 Change from contrasting the monkeys with the 'prentice boys who are 

 teasing them, but a few pages of Locke or a few lines of Milton have 

 always restored me to tranquillity and convinced me that the supe- 

 riority of man had nothing to fear. * * * * What have the 

 shadow and mockery of faculties given to beasts to do with the 

 immortality of the soul ? Have beasts any general fear of annihila- 

 tion ? Have they any love of posthumous fame ? Have they any 

 knowledge of God ? Have they ever reached in their conceptions the 

 slightest trace of an hereafter ? Can they form the notion of duty and 

 accountability ? * * * * Is it no reason to say, that because they 

 partake in the slightest degree of our nature, they are entitled to 

 all the privileges of our nature ? because upon that principle, if we 

 partook of the nature of any higher order of spirits, we ought to be 

 them and not ourselves, and they ought to be some higher order still, 

 and so on. * * * * As facts are fairly stated, and boldly 

 brought forward, the more all investigation goes to establish the 

 ancient opinion of man before it was confirmed (?) by revealed 

 religion, that brutes are of this world only; that man is imprisoned 

 here only for a season to take a better or a worse hereafter as he 

 deserves it. This old truth is the fountain of all goodness and 

 of justice and kindness among men; may we all feel it intimately, 

 obey it perpetually, and profit by it eternally." (' Moral Philosophy/ 

 pp. 238, 272.) 



J. C. Atkinson. 



Danby Parsonage, Grosmont, 

 York. 



