THE 
VETERINARIAN. 
VOL. XIII, No. 150.] JUNE 1840. [New Series, No. 90. 
ON THE NON-IMMORTALJTY OF ANIMALS. 
By Mr. W. C. SPOONER, Southampton. 
I CONCLUDED my last paper by promising that, in the present, 
1 would endeavour to establish two propositions, the first being, 
that the possession of reason did not prove immortality; and the 
second, that it was not reasonable to suppose that the animals be¬ 
low us in the scale of existence were immortal. 
Let us first direct our attention to the former proposition, and, 
in so doing, we must suppose that it has been satisfactorily proved 
that reason is possessed by brutes. But wHy must this pre-sup- 
pose immortality? Is it because it is possessed by man, whose 
immortality is acknowledged? Certainly not; for brutes have 
numerous other faculties in common with man. Like him, they 
are susceptible of friendship and of love, and are influenced by the 
feelings of fear, hatred, and revenge. Some we find whose natures 
are kind and benevolent; others in whose ruling dispositions evil 
predominates. Many birds have the faculty of distinguishing mu¬ 
sical notes, and most animals learn to distinguish certain sounds 
with ease. There are few brutes who cannot distinguish time (of 
which amongst dogs there are some remarkable instances well 
attested); and their power of recognizing persons and places, and 
finding their way from distant spots, have been also satisfactorily 
proved. And, besides the possession of these and other faculties, 
animals have the power of exercising them by means of attention, 
memory, and the association of ideas, as is beautifully shewn in 
Mr. Youatt’s work on Humanity. 
Animals required the possession of these several faculties in 
order that they should be enabled to put into practice their singular 
and different means of procuring sustenance, preserving themselves 
VOL. XIII. 3 E 
