658 
AX ESSAY ON THE FUTU11E EXISTENCE 
ment by the mind, and, consequently, can be possessed by no mind- 
less creature. 
y “Insects exhibit to us another investiture and display of the 
living and sentient and thinking principle ; and this in full activity 
and power within figures and limbs so small, as to compel our won- 
der at the nature of that intellectual mystery and miracle to which 
space is indifferent, and which is equally efficient and astonishing in 
the smallest as in the greatest body*.” 
Locke admits to brutes a certain degree of reasoning, but denies 
them the power of abstraction. Let us briefly consider this opinion. 
Man himself does not possess the power of abstraction in his very 
early years, except in a very limited degree, and, before he acquires 
it, he differs nothing in his reasoning powers from some of the 
lower animals. The infant in discerning pleasure from pain, 
bitters from sweets, and in discriminating its parent, does not at all 
excel the faculties of the brute world ; nor in its cries and smiles 
does it at all surpass the cries and playfulness of other animals, as 
signs of its pleasures and pains.. 
Abstraction admits of a vast variety of degrees, descending from 
that which constitutes the highest order of intellect to a power of 
generalizing which could not be denied even to an idiot, and it can- 
not be denied that all animals clearly possess this power in a greater 
or less degree : for example, some animals can count, and are aware 
of the recurrence of certain numbers ; and a dog who has been once 
beaten with a stick, or pelted with a stone, will not soon forget it. 
Again, “ a dog knows his master, knows that he is not a dog, and 
that he differs from other men. A bull is enraged at a red colour, be 
the form of the body what you please. Birds wishing to drink water 
from a pitcher in which it is too low for them to reach with their 
bills, throw pebbles in, until so much of the water is displaced by 
them that the surface rises to the necessary height. In this case 
the bird abstracts. It never throws stones into a river with the 
same view, but it does throw them into the water in the ewer. It 
abstracts the water from the thing which contains it, and could not 
reason upon the effects of the operation without a process of ab- 
stractiont.” 
The question of abstraction would be most conclusively settled 
if it could be proved that they possess a language — the most im- 
portant distinction between man and beasts. But the absence of 
this appears not to be owing to the inability of forming general 
notions ; since they all possess, more or less, a system of conven- 
tional signs, which have a general signification. The cock grouse 
* Sharon Turner. 
t Lord Brougham. 
