OF THE BRUTE CREATION. 
657 
thou hearest them.” What plea for mercy, then, shall we offer, 
when our delegated authority is at an end, and we stand at His 
tribunal whose works we have abused 1 
We took for our text, “Quicquid est illud, quod sapit, quod viget, 
coeleste et divinum est, ideoque seternum.” It will be an easy task 
to prove that animals do really “ feel, will, and act with discern- 
ment;” yet it would be begging the question to ask our readers 
to admit, with. Cicero, that, because they possess those qualities, 
they must necessarily be eternal. We will, therefore, now 
establish the first part ; and to do this, it will be only necessary to 
take some of the most simple actions of animals. 
Every animal is peculiarly endowed according to its destined 
mode of life. In those animals, for instance, who have to depend 
on the eye both for their safety and their support, we find this 
organ is far more exquisitely formed than in man. The eagle can 
discover her prey many fathoms above the ground, even when that 
prey is at rest, and coloured very similarly to the ground upon which 
it crouches ; and as she descends upon it in the arrowy swiftness 
of her stoop, she can so guide her course as not only to strike the 
prey, but to strike it where the blow shall have mortal effect. 
The smaller tribe, and all birds and insects which hunt for their 
prey upon the wing, afford further instances of this remarkable 
accuracy of the eye. But, perhaps, the most remarkable instances 
are found amongst fish — and, also, in many unvertebrated inha- 
bitants of the sea, especially the lobster, which, launching itself 
from the rock, can dart itself forward many feet with the rapidity 
of an arrow and the certainty of a rifle. 
This perfection of vision in brutes is produced by the most beau- 
tiful and perfect adjustment of the eye, which depends not on any 
absolute connexion with the immediate faculty of seeing, but on the 
muscular action of the eye. 
The fact of the adjustment of the eye to distance being muscu- 
lar, and not in itself any direct part of the proper act of vision, is 
very important to our subject ; since it clearly proves that the eye 
sees nothing but colour, and that the knowledge of distance, and of 
magnitude of which distance is the measure, is obtained by mus- 
cular experience, upon the same principle, though not, of course, 
in the same manner, as we measure the length of a road by pacing 
along it. 
Then what we call visual knowledge is not, in any way, an act 
of the eye, as a mere organ — admirable as it is in its form and use — 
but a mental influence arising from the generalization of two dis- 
tinct actions of different parts of the eye, which have in themselves 
no connexion with each other ; or, in other words, it is a discern- 
