ON THE NON-IMMORTALITY OF ANIMALS. 517 
have received from the bounteous hand of the Creator the gift of 
existence and the means of enjoyment. Our curiosity is excited 
by phenomena in which our own welfare is so intimately con¬ 
cerned, and we cannot help taking a lively interest in the history 
of living beings in many respects so analogous to ourselves;— 
" like us, possessing powers of spontaneous motion, impelled by 
passions and desires, and endowed with capacities of enjoyment and 
suffering;—like us, in fact, existing as we exist, and vanishing as 
we vanish from the sphere of observation. To our unassisted reason, 
many of them may appear useless; and if there should be, as is 
generally supposed, 100,000 species of insects, of endless modifi¬ 
cations of shape, can you tell me what use 50,000 of them are 1 
Or if we direct our attention to the tenants of the deep—the great 
expanse of ocean, together with the rivers that run into it, and the 
lakes that are confined in land, all teeming with organized inha¬ 
bitants.—^Linnaeus reckoned more than 4000 species—pray, can 
you. Sir, tell me of what use 2000 of them are ? If there are from 
1500 to 2000 different kinds of bird, whose rapidity on the wing 
and instinctive ingenuity in making their nests and providing for 
their young, and in taking their extensive excursions and migra¬ 
tions, excite our wonder, 
“ Singing up to heaven’s gate, ascend, 
Bear on their wing, and in their notes his praise,” 
pray can you inform me of what use one-half of them are ? Or, if 
there be between five and six hundred species of mammalia, some 
of them, as the horse and dog, admirably adapted to be the friends 
and companions of man, and others, as the sheep and cow, to 
afford him sustenance and raiment,—pray can you inform me of 
what service three hundred of them are 1 Consider this; consider 
how little we know of even the minutest designs of God, ere you 
again dogmatically assert " that it is not reasonable to consider 
animals to be immortal,” because “ there would he no use in their 
being so.” 
If they are reserved for a future state, and destined, like man, 
in a new heaven or a new earth, to animate new bodies and of dif¬ 
ferent materials, who will presume to say to the Omniscient and the 
Almighty, that, having fulfilled his purposes here, they can answer 
no other purposes hereafter ? May they not be reserved, as Dr. 
Barclay imagines them to be, “ as forming many of the customary 
links in the chain of being, and, by preserving the chain entire, 
contribute there, as they do here, to the general beauty and variety 
of the universe* ]” 
But you go on to argue, “ supposing (you say) that they are 
* Barclay’s History of Opinions on Life, p. 398-9 
VOL. XIII. 3 z 
