3T4 
ON THE NON-IMMORTALITY OF ANIMALS. 
and their offspring in safety, and, in short, fulfilling their destined 
purposes in the wide range of animated existence. If, therefore, 
for these same wise purposes, they required likewise the possession 
of some small portion of reason, is it probable that this faculty, too, 
would not be possessed by them 1 
The deeper we examine into the works of Nature and the farther 
we extend our researches into natural history and the construction of 
animal bodies, the more thoroughly are we con vinced of the perfect 
adaptation of cause and effect—the intimate relation of the means 
to the end. As surely as an animal possesses a want, he possesses 
likewise the means of satisfying that want: if rapidity of motion 
is necessary, the organs of locomotion are enabled to furnish it; if 
a super-human sight is essential to the animal, the organs of vision 
are constituted accordingly. So immense, indeed, is the accumu¬ 
lative evidence on this head, that there is no fact in philosophy or 
mathematics better established than the wisdom and economy which 
pervades throughout Nature’s works. As sure as we survey a part 
of an animal (always excepting lusce naturce), we are convinced 
that such a part was constituted for some useful purpose, even al¬ 
though this purpose may be unknown to us. 
As the globe becomes more cultivated and inhabited, the wilder 
races of animals are diminishing, and the domesticated families in¬ 
creasing. All this is as perfectly consistent with the great designs 
of the Creator as the more unchanging state of the inhabitants of 
the ocean. Domesticated animals have less demand for pure in¬ 
stinct than the wilder races, but more for those faculties that can be 
improved or swayed by education, and particularly for that which 
enables them to deduct one proposition from another, and thus to 
accommodate themselves to the ever-varying disposition of the 
objects and circumstances around them. 
Animals, therefore, possess just as much of the reasoning faculty 
as is necessary for them, and no more. They can draw a simple 
inference, but they cannot solve a problem in Euclid. They can 
form a shrewd idea from past experience as to whether they shall 
receive good or bad treatment from a particular individual; but 
they are altogether incapable of discovering whether the earth is 
round or flat, or whether it goes round the sun. If we might be 
allowed to compare the reasoning faculties to a lofty house, con¬ 
sisting of numerous stories, we should say that animals were fixedly 
and permanently confined to the ground floor, above which they 
could never venture to rise; whilst man is enabled to go aloft, and 
from the upper stories to gaze on the moon and the stars—to mea¬ 
sure their distances, calculate their periods and their changes, and 
to contemplate the mysteries and sublimities of the creation in all 
their wonder and immensity. 
