570 
MR. SPOONER’S REPLY TO MR. KARKEEK 
this subject, as on many others, I am content to acknowledge my 
ignorance, and confess, in the language of scripture, that we see 
through a glass darkly.” 
In the early part of your letter you deny that I have proved my 
first proposition, “That the possession of reason did not prove im¬ 
mortality.” You have, however, adduced no argument in opposi¬ 
tion to it. You say, that I only shew that the difference in the 
reasoning powers of man and brutes is in degree and not in kind. 
I admit this; but the very simile that you do me honour to notice 
i«? made use of to express, in the most striking manner, the im¬ 
measurable distance there is in these degrees—a distance rendered 
insurmountable by an impassable gulph. We see a striking re¬ 
semblance, a great analogy, between the reason of man and ani¬ 
mals, it is true ; but we are scarcely justified in saying they belong 
to the same chain: for although we may trace links or degrees, 
both in man and in animals, yet there is between the one and the 
other a disunion of the chain which no effort of man or beast can 
ever link together. The simplest process of reason, i. e. the deduc¬ 
tion of a single inference, having no relation to a future state of 
being, but confined to the present alone, is, I again assert, no 
proof of immortality. 
I was fully aware. Sir, that in the position you assume, you did 
not stand alone; and the numerous authorities whom you quote 
still further assure me that you have much goodly company. But 
yet for all this, I must confess that I have little respect for the 
opinions of our old metaphysicians; for their doctrines, one after 
another, have nearly all been overthrown by the facts and argu¬ 
ments derived from a careful and dispassionate perusal of Nature's 
own book. 
You come next to my second proposition, “ That it is not rea¬ 
sonable to suppose that animals are immortal, on two grounds,—one, 
that there would be no use in their being so; and the other, that 
their faculties are not constituted for immortality.” 
To oppose the first of these reasons, you recount some of the 
wonders of nature; and, after instancing the prodigious number of 
the species of animals, birds, and insects, you ask me if I can tell 
you what use one-half of them are! This, Sir, I think I can do 
without much difficulty,—thanks to the lights afforded by natural 
science. An immense number of these creatures are decidedly 
useful to man, furnishing him with food, and raiment, and medi¬ 
cine—many of them are useful to each other—and a vast number 
act as Nature’s scavengers, in devouring animal bodies that would 
else become pestilentious, or consuming superfluous vegetation 
that would otherwise fill the atmosphere with the elements of dis¬ 
ease. And if you were to tell me of thousands of thousands of 
