MENTAL, CONSTITUTION OF ANIMALS. 



189 



they are only unfortunate in having inherited from na- 

 ture. Criminal jurisprudence, then, addresses itself less 

 to the direct punishment than to the reformation and 

 care-taking of those liable to its attention. And such a 

 treatment of criminals, it may be further remarked, so 

 that it stop short of affording any encouragement to crime 

 (a point which experience will determine,) is evidently 

 no more than justice, seeing how accidentally all forms 

 of the moral constitution are distributed, and how thor- 

 oughly mutual obligation shines throughout the whole 

 frame of society — the strong to help the weak, the good 

 to redeem and restrain the bad. 



The sum of all we have seen of the psychical consti 

 tution of man is, that its Almighty Author has destined 

 it, like everything else, to be developed from inherent 

 qualities, and to have a mode of action depending solely 

 on its own organization. Thus the whole is complete on 

 one principle. The masses of space are formed by law ; 

 law makes them in due time theatres of existence for 

 plants and animals ; sensation, disposition, intellect, are 

 all in like manner developed and sustained in action by 

 law. It is most interesting to observe into how small a 

 field the whole of the mysteries of nature thus ultimately 

 resolve themselves. The inorganic has one final compre- 

 hensive law, gravitation. The organic, the other 

 great department of mundane things, rests in like manner 

 on one law, and that is — development. Nor may even 

 these be after all twain, but only branches of one still 

 more comprehensive law, the expression of that unity 

 which man's wit can scarcely separate from Deity itself 



PURPOSE AND GENERAL CONDITION OF THE 

 ANIMATED CREATION 



We have now to inquire how this view of the constitu- 

 tion and origin of nature bears upon the condition of man 

 upon the earth, and his relation to supra-mundane things 



That enjoyment is the proper attendant of animal ex- 

 istence is pressed upon us by all that we see and all we 

 experience. Everywhere we perceive in the lower crea- 

 tures, in their ordinary condition, symptoms of enjoyment. 

 Their whole being is a system of needs, the supplying oi 

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