G28 
COMPARISON BETWEEN 
moniously combined, the brain is not only the largest in its 
size, but, beyond all comparison, the most complicated in its 
structure 
u A large brain has been bestowed on man, evidently with the 
design that he should exercise superior powers of intellect; the 
great distinguishing features of which are the capacity for 
retaining an immense variety of impressions, and the strength, 
the extent, and vast range of the associating principle, which 
combines them into groups, and forms them into abstract ideas. 
Yet the lower animals also possess their share of memory and 
of reason : they are capable of acquiring knowledge from ex- 
perience ; and, on some rare occasions, of devising expedients for 
accomplishing particular ends. But still this knowledge and 
these efforts of intellect are confined within very narrow limits ; 
for nature has assigned boundaries to the advancement of the 
lower animals which they can never pass. If one favoured 
individual be selected for a special education, some additional 
share of intelligence may, perhaps, with infinite pains, be 
infused ; but the improvement perishes with that individual, and 
is wholly lost to the race. By far the greater portion of that 
knowledge which it imports them to possess is the gift of nature, 
who has wisely implanted such instinctive impulses as are neces- 
sary for their preservation. Man also is bom with instincts, but 
they are few in number compared with those of the lower animals, 
and, unless cultivated and improved by education and reason, 
would of themselves produce but inconsiderable results. That 
of which the effects are most conspicuous, and which is the 
foundation of all that is noble and exalted in our nature, is the 
instinct of sympathy. The affections of the lower animals, even 
between individuals of the same species, are observable only in a 
few instances ; for in general they are indifferent to each other’s 
joy or suffering, and regardless of the treatment experienced by 
* All the parts met with in the brain of animals exist also in the brain of 
man; while several of those found in man are either extremely small, or 
altogether absent in the brains of the lower animals. Soemmering has 
enumerated no less than fifteen material anatomical differences between the 
human brain and that of the ape. 
