ANIMAL AND VEGETABLE PHVSIOLOGV. 287 
embrace a wider range of objects, and are carried to higher de¬ 
grees of excellence. 
Confining our inquiries, then, to the more intelligible in¬ 
tellectual phenomena displayed by the higher animals, we 
readily trace a gradation which corresponds with the deve¬ 
lopment of the central nervous organ, or brain. That the 
comparison may be fairly made, the author has thought it ne¬ 
cessary to distinguish these actions which are the result of the 
exercise of the intellectual faculties from those which are called 
instinctive, and are referrible to other sources. In all the in¬ 
ferior orders of the animal creation, where instincts are multi¬ 
plied while the indications of intellect are feeble, the organ 
which performs the office of the brain is comparatively small. 
The sensitive existence of these animals appears to be circum¬ 
scribed within the perception of the moment, and their voluntary 
actions have reference chiefly to objects which are present to the 
sense. But in proportion as the intellectual faculties of animals 
are multiplied, we discover that an additional magnitude and 
complication of structure are given to the brain. In man, in 
whom all the faculties of sense and intellect are so harmoniously 
combined, the brain is not only the largest in its size, but, be¬ 
yond all comparison, the most complicated in its structure. 
large brain,” says the author, has been bestowed on man, evi¬ 
dently with the design that he should exercise superior powers 
of intellect; the great distinguishing features of which are the 
capacity for retaining an immense variety of impressions, and the 
strength, the extent, and vast range of the associating principle, 
which combines them into groups, and forms them into abstract 
ideas. Yet the lower animals akp possess their share of memo¬ 
ry and of reason : they are capable of acquiring knowledge from 
experience; and, on some rare occasions, of devising expedients 
for accomplishing particular ends. But still their knowledge, 
and their efforts of intellect, are confined within very narrow 
limits; for nature has assigned boundaries to the advancement 
of the lower animals which they can never pass. By far the 
greater portion of that knowledge which it imports them to 
possess is the gift of nature, who has wisely implanted such 
instinctive impulses as are necessary for their preservation. Man 
also is born with instincts, but they are few in number compared 
with those of the lower animals ; but that instinct which is the 
most conspicuous in the human subject, and which is the foun¬ 
dation of all that is noble and exalted in our nature, and which 
is altogether wanting in the lower animals, is the instinct of 
syrnpathij.'^ 
Here we must beg to differ from the learned doctor ; and on 
this subject we have a perfect right so to do, as we fancy that 
