790 Reason—A Psychological Distinction. [ October, 
other, giving ideas of definite, distinct substances, and of their 
reciprocal action in cause and effect. These operations, including 
the higher form of abstract reasoning, involve the use of the fac- 
ulties of memory, reflection, association, abstraction, etc., and the 
formation of logical judgments. 
The processes of the understanding, working upon the percep- 
tions of sense, weave all the facts of nature into one endless 
chain of effects, each dependent upon its foregoing cause. In 
pursuing such a train of thought there can, of course, be no 
departure from the real and tangible ; no approach to the uncon- 
ditional—to the primal cause. There can be no conception of 
any pawer above nature because the understanding considers 
only natural facts for which it assigns natural causes ; hence there 
can be no rising above the things known to the manner of know- 
ing, nor above limited time and space to the Infinite, nor above 
conditioned power and truth and beauty and goodness to the Ab- 
solute. All these grander conceptions, distinct from j udgments of 
the understanding in their scope, their creation, and the princt- 
ples which underlie them, are the products of reason, the queen 
of the intellectual trinity and the vivifier of intellectual activity. 
e lower animals have the power of sense, their perceptive 
faculties being often better developed than those of man, thoug 
usually not in so great a variety. They also have the power of 
understanding, to a variable extent; can learn from experience, 
reason from cause to effect, and by association of ideas; in some 
cases the memory is capable of considerable development. It 1s 
freely granted by all unprejudiced thinkers, I believe, that there 
is a possibility for the irresponsible animals to reach the ail § 
highest attainments of the understanding, though in every ™ 
stance yet recorded they fall immeasurably below them. But 
beyond this limit they can never go; they are a part of nature 
and amenable to natural laws, mentally as well as physically ; t° 
modify Hamilton’s famous conclusion, “the animal mind ¢ 
never know the unconditioned.” The animal mind can discovet 
but can never invent; it can utilize and explain, but can never 
originate. It can have none of those thoughts commonly 
ascribed to morality, no appreciation of the beautiful, no know- 
ledge of truth, no conception of the infinite and the absolute. 
