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their totality are but the intelligence of man.” The mind is 
not for the sake of knowledge,, but knowledge for the sake of 
the mind. He acknowledged the “ idea of an infinite, perfect, 
and all-powerful Being, which cannot be the creation of our- 
selves,” and our thoughts as necessarily given to us by “some 
Being who really possesses all that we in idea attribute to 
Him — the Creator of the material universe, and of all truth in 
the intellectual world.” 
According to his biographer, his theory reduced man and 
animals to automata, and indeed he termed them machines. 
In the animal the rule of absolute mechanism is as complete as 
in the cosmos. Reason and thought, the essential quality of 
the soul, do not belong to the brutes. There is an impassable 
gulf fixed between man and the lower animals. The only sure 
sign of reason is language, and language in this sense is not 
found save in man. The cries of animals are but the working 
of the “curiously-contrived machine, in which one portion 
is touched in a certain way ; the wheels and springs concealed 
in the interior perform 'their work, and, it may be, a note 
supposed to express joy or pain is evolved ; but there is no 
consciousness or feeling. The animals act naturally and by 
springs, like a watch. The greatest of all the prejudices we 
have retained from our infancy is that of believing animals 
think.” And then this philosopher is said to have expressed 
himself that he would not believe that a beast thinks, until the 
beast tells him so itself. The sentience of the animal to the lash 
of its tyrant is none other than the sentience of the plant to 
the influences of light and heat. 
The doctrines thus expressed won society and literature 
before they penetrated into the universities. Literary men 
opened their houses for readings, to which the intellectual 
world of Paris — its learned professors and fair sex — flocked 
to hear the new doctrines explained. In England these 
doctrines took but little hold ; and in France they had passed 
away into neglect by the middle of the eighteenth century. 
Have we not in the abstract given the original and greater 
part of what might appropriately at the present day be 
written regarding some living theorists and their theories ? 
Strong in self-opinion, hard and uncompromising towards the 
views of other inquirers, materialistic to an extreme degree, 
yet owning to and confessing the existence of an ultimate 
source of causation not to be discussed or comprehended by 
means of physical investigations ; unsympathetic towards his 
own kind, and, if possible, still more so towards inferior 
creatures ; denying to the latter attributes beyond those pos- 
sessed by machines. And last of all, in the extent and 
