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ments against religious belief, if they could show the difference to be slighter 
than is supposed between men and brutes, and that there is a chain of being 
from the plant, nay almost from inorganic matter, up to man. They seem to 
have had a confused idea that this helped them even to account for the 
constitution of the universe < without the hypothesis of a Deity as Laplace is 
said to have termed it when Napoleon questioned him on the remariiable 
omission in the ‘ Mecanique Celeste Thus much is certain m of fart, 
that those philosophers, and especially the French school, were fo 
lowering the human intellect by raising that of the animals ; and while the 
nriei were lavish of their admission that our moral nature is utterly 
corrupt but claimed for our intellectual capacity to be only a little kwto 
the angels, the society of the Encyclopedic and the coterie of Ba . 
d’Holbach were fond of levelling the intellectual distinction between ^ im- 
mortal and confessedly mortal beings, though they denied " Z 
depravity of their race with perhaps no very strict regard either to the 
evidence of tlieir consciousness or of their observation.” 
The Chairman.— I suppose I may take it for granted that the thanks of 
the Society are to be returned to the author of this paper. I cannot say 
that, however, without adding that I think we must stigmatize the paper as 
being too brief. I shall now be happy to hear any remarks which any of our 
members or visitors may wish to make upon the subject. 
Eev C A Kow.-I have no wish to dispute the general position laid 
down in this paper, that there is a vast distinction between the intelligence 
of man and of the brute creation. That is the last thing that I should 
dispute, but I think there is a great want of satisfactory proof of that d s 
tinction adduced in the paper, while there are several assumptions in which 
am unable to acquiesce. The author of the paper takes for granted the exist- 
ence of something which he calls natural sagacity ; but he has not told us w hat 
it is. For aught I know, it may include a large share of what I call reason, and 
therefore we are in a difficulty when we come to discuss the matter. Then 
would call attention to the latter part of the paper, where there appears to me 
to be a want of accuracy of definition. The author has used the words reason, 
“ reasoning” and “ intelligence,” and several other terms of that description, 
as though° they meant the same thing ; but I think there is a vast distmc- 
tion between reason and reasoning— between the noun and the ver . 
I speak of reason, I meansomething different from what I mean by argument, li 
I say, “ I will argue this point,” I mean that I will argue it either deductive y 
or inductively ; but when speaking of my reason, I therein include nea, y 
the whole of my intellectual faculties. In this paper, the author views reason 
as though it had the same meaning as reasoning ; and m the latter par . 
asserts that the “ animal is in fact an automaton.” Now if that theory is ad- 
mitted, it goes a great deal further than I should like to go, an ^ aim 
maton is a mere piece of mechanism without feeling and without natura 
sagacity. In his 14th paragraph Mr. Morshead says 
