618 
MR. KARKEEK’S REPLY TO MR. SPOONER 
the human being and the brute.”—On this point we are at issue. 
I have already referred you to my remarks on this subject, and I 
defy you to sustain this position. 
My third position was, that these qualities mentioned in my 
two first were dependent on the formation of the brain, where the 
spirit of intelligence exists; and that, if the intellectual phenomena 
in man required an immaterial principle superadded to the brain, 
we must concede the same to the inferior animals, as there is quite 
enough of similarity and approximation in their brains to our own 
to be acted on in a similar way. 
In your first paper, which appeared in The VETERINARIAN 
for April, you alluded to this last position of mine as being my 
“ principal one;” and stated that, “in your next, you would shew 
cause why you did not consider the reasoning principle in animals 
as an attribute of immortality.” 
Well, Sir, your second paper appeared in June; but the wall 
which I had built up was not attacked; you did not even fire a 
shot at it. You shewed, it is true, in a very plain and beautiful 
manner, the wide gulph which exists between the reasoning powers 
of a philosopher and those of the inferior animals; but that great 
difference you have acknowledged in your third paper to be one 
of degree, although you believe it to be different in kind. 
In my reply, I just hinted that you had not attempted to dispute 
this position; and again, in your third paper, you honestly and 
straightforwardly confessed your inability to do so, and that, after 
reading the arguments of divines and others as to whether the 
soul and the mind are the same, or distinct from each other, you 
could not decide, for the reasoning of neither was convincing; and 
yet you felt inclined to consider them distinct: for why 1 —because 
the latter opinion most accords with your own theory. 
After these acknowledgments on your part, I certainly should 
have felt inclined to drop the controversy, as the principal differ¬ 
ence between us then would have been, as to the admitting the 
reasoning faculties of brutes to be the same in kmd as our own. 
And this, I think, I could easily have persuaded you to acknow¬ 
ledge. For although, to the proud and prejudiced powers of the 
human mind, that degree of difference may appear to form an im¬ 
passable gulph, it is undouljtedly far otherwise in the eyes of those 
purified, exalted spirits who, “ knowing even as they are known”— 
their cognizance of universal nature being unclouded by the mists 
of earthly passions, and unclogged by a necessity for sensual media 
of perception, regard from their high eminence, and in their just pro¬ 
portions of importance, the “ worms of earth” of every grade, biped, 
quadruped, and reptile. If such be the humiliating view of man 
in the sight of these exalted creatures, how infinitely must his sel- 
