72 
Life and its Basis . 
[February, 
vast majority of the living beings of this order, manifest the 
possession of volition as individuals. This faculty of will, if 
it actually exists, proves the presence of something distinct 
from, and superior to, matter. And when, in addition to this, 
an animal shows by its actions that it has the power of 
thinking, of reflecting, of comparing, selecting, calculating 
(with accuracy within certain limits) ; and still more when 
it exhibits natural or acquired sagacity and discernment, 
observation and imitation ; and above all, when it manifests 
moral qualities, even of a high order, such as unswerving fide- 
lity and devoted affection, of gratitude and sympathy, as well 
as the more ordinary sentiments of fear, jealousy, &c., or of 
cool, deliberate, and long-cherished revenge for insults or 
injuries; — what, I ask, are these qualities, so familiar to us 
all, and especially to students of natural history ? They are 
not qualities of matter, nor even of living matter, or they 
would be exhibited by plants and trees as well as animals. 
The tempers and dispositions of individual animals can 
seldom be traced with any probability to mere bodily organ- 
ization, any more than in the human race. In short, innu- 
merable qualities exclusively mental are manifestly possessed 
by animals, from the ‘ half-reasoning ’ elephant down to the 
ant, which is held up by the Wise Man as a pattern of 
industry and prudence to the careless and improvident sons 
of men. It may be pertinent here to remark that, whether 
we measure the psychical force in the lower animals by the 
intelligence they manifest, or by the physical strength they 
can put forth at will, no correspondence has been proved 
to exist between it and the magnitude of their bodily frame, 
nor yet in the proportion which their nervous system bears 
to their bodies. They are two incommensurable quantities. 
It is true, that as we descend in the artificially constructed 
scale of animated beings, our means of tracing their mental 
faculties continually diminish, though this does not disprove 
their existence. So, likewise, the evidence of the existence 
of individual volition becomes less and less distinct, and 
seems at length to vanish altogether ; or, perhaps, we should 
rather say, appears to merge into some other form of force. 
Nevertheless, volition, as evidenced in voluntary motion, 
seems to be the best criterion we possess, in the failure of 
the old tests afforded by organic chemistry, of the difference 
between a plant and an animal. The distinction is a real 
one, although we may neither be able to define its lower 
limit, nor to say at what precise stage in the life-history of 
each individual, volition commences. 
But volition being evident, the next question is, To what 
