520 
REPLY TO MR. W. C. SPOONER’S PAPER 
not irrational, that it may have some unexplored relations with 
those orbs which have been made expressly to be our fellow 
planets*. 
You will observe, Sir, that Bonnet and Dr. Cudworth entertained 
similar conjectures, and it is delightful to recollect that in our 
Father’s house there are many mansions: it appears but rea¬ 
sonable to suppose that the inferior animals, who form the principal 
portion of the animated chain, will hereafter reside in some of them, 
and contribute there, as they do here, to the beauty and harmony 
of the whole. It is even pleasurable to think that both they and we 
are in one of them only here, and that, therefore, there are many 
more to know. 
But let us pass on, for I really had no idea of being drawn into 
such a lengthened reply at the onset. I would not willingly leave 
a single query of your’s unanswered, and yet there are some which 
you have put that might as well have been left alone. For 
instance, in the latter portion of your paper, in allusion to the want 
of perception of the sublime and beautiful in the lower animals, 
their having no idea of right or wrong, no conscience, being denied all 
exercise of religious feeling, experiencing no veneration for an un¬ 
seen being, no aspirations after a future state : this is what you call 
the grand difference between the human being and the brute. 
I allow the difference, but only in degree, and not in kind. I 
have already sufficiently proved in my Essay that conscience is 
only a relative term; and I adduced several instances which 
prove to a demonstration that it is the consequence of education, 
being only the production of an accumulation of knowledge, or 
known facts and doctrines: I also shewed that most of our domes¬ 
ticated animals possess consciences according to their capacities 
and to the education which they have received. I will, therefore, 
refer you, and the readers of The Veterinarian, to pages 662, 
663, and 664, vol. xii, for my views on this part of the subject. 
There is yet another portion of your second proposition still to 
be considered, and which, unless I very much mistake, you con¬ 
sider to be quite sufficient to upset my argument altogether:—“Let 
us go,” you say, “ still lower in creation, and take, for example, 
the ephemeron of the moment that dances in the sunbeams, whose 
beginning and whose end are encompassed by the same hour. 
Such a being is brought into existence, satisfies its desires, con¬ 
tinues its species, and then dies and makes room for others.” And 
you then ask, and very plausibly too, “What purpose can it 
answer to endow such a being with an immortal soul? What 
faculties does it possess separate from the body?” 
I would first beg to refer you to pages 777 and 778 of The 
* Sharon Turner’s Sacred History. 
