which might be produced by a rash management of so dangerous an element, we shall see abundant reason to admire that wise arrangement which, among the various inhabitants of the earth, has confined the use of it exclusively to our own species. The opinion which I have now been combating is not peculiar to the philosophers of modern France. From the memorabilia of Xenophon it appears that it was current among the sophists of antiquity; and the answer which Socrates gives to it is as philosophical and satisfactory as any thing that could possibly be advanced in the present improved state of the sciences. "And canst thou doubt, Aristodemus, if the gods take care of Man ? Hath not the privilege of an erect form been bestowed on him alone? Other animals, indeed, they have provided with feet by which they may remove from one place to another; but to man they have also given the use of the hand. A tongue hath been bestowed on every other animal; but what animal except man hath the power of making his thoughts intelligible to others? "Nor is it with respect to the body alone that the gods have shown themselves bountiful to man. Who seeth not that he is as it were a god in the midst of this visible creation ?-So far doth he surpass all animals whatever in the endowments of his body and his mind. For if the body of the ox had been joined to the mind of man, the invention of the latter would. have been of little avail to him, while unable to execute his purposes with facility. Nor would the human form have been of more use to the brute, so long as he remained destitute of understanding. But in thee, Aristodemus, hath been joined to a wonderful soul, a body no less wonderful; and sayest thou after this,-The gods take no care of me? What wouldst thou then more to convince thee of their care ?"1 1 The reader, who is unacquainted with Greek, may peruse this work of Xenophon's (undoubtedly one of the most precious remains of ancient philo sophy) in the excellent version of Mrs. [Miss] Sarah Fielding. [The reference to the original is book i. ch. iv. sects. 11-14.] A very remarkable passage to the same purpose occurs in Galen's treatise, De Usu Partium. "But, as of all animals, Man is the wisest, so Hands are well fitted for the purposes of a wise animal. For it is not because he had hands that he is therefore wiser than the rest, as Anaxagoras alleged; but because he was wiser than the rest, that he had therefore hands, as Aristotle has most wisely judged.* Neither was it [As Aristotle, here alleged in confirmation, was, in fact, the original author of Galen's admirable observations upon the human hand; and as the Stagirite is an authority even more weighty than the physician of Pergamus, in confirmation of our author's reasoning in disproof of the hypothesis of Helvetius, I shall translate a few sentences from the relative context of Aristotle, which is in book iv. chapter x. of the treatise De Partibus Animalium:-" But why one animal has two feet, another many feet, and a third no feet at all; and why, in general, some organisms are plants, others animals,-this has been already stated. The cause likewise has been assigned, why Man of all animals is alone erect; and why, standing naturally erect, he has no need of forefeet, Nature bestowing on him, in lieu thereof, arms and hands.-Now Anaxagoras says, that Man is the wisest of animals, because he alone possesses Hands. It is, however, more rational to maintain, that Man possesses Hands, because he of animals is the wisest, for hands are an instrument of prehension, (or appropriation, To λaμßávsiv.) But Nature, like a wise intelligence, distributes to every creature her several endowments according to the capacity of using them. For it is more proper that a flute should be given to a flute-player, than a skill of flute-playing bestowed on the possessor of a flute; thus adding the lesser to the greater and more excellent, and not, on the contrary, the greater and more excellent to the lesser. But if this be preferable, and if of possibilities Nature always operates the preferable, it is to be presumed, that man is not the wisest of animals from possessing hands, but that he possesses hands from being the wisest of animals. For the wisest can use to the best effect the greatest number of instruments. Now the Hand appears to be, not a single instrument, but many; for it is, as it were, an instrument anterior to, or the condition of, other instruments, [ὄργανον πρὸ ὀργάνων : and in another work, the De Anima, Aristotle calls the human Hand, the instrument of instruments.] Nature, therefore, has bestowed the Hand, as useful for the employment of the greatest number of instruments, on the creature susceptible of the greatest number of arts. Those, therefore, who speak of man among animals not only as ill, but as the one worst provided, (being as they say naked, weak, and defenceless,) do not speak correctly. For the other animals have only a single aid, and are unable to exchange this one for any other, being as it were compelled to sleep always and to perform every action of their life with shoes and gloves on; they have, in fact, no power of throwing off or varying the single defence which haply environs their body. Man, on the contrary, has many aids, and these it is always in his power to change; nay even to choose what arms he will, and when and where he should go armed. For the Hand is both nail and hoof and horn, spear also and sword; in a word, any weapon or instrument. For his hands, but his reason, which instructed man in the arts. The hands are only the organs by which the arts are practised."1 These general considerations seem sufficiently to prove, that the powers of the Human Understanding do not admit of comparison with the Instincts of the lower animals; the difference between them being a difference not in degree but in kind. Perhaps this is the single instance, in which that regular gradation, which we everywhere else observe in the universe, fails entirely. The fact is the more striking, as it fails only with respect to the human mind; for the bodily organization of man is distinguished from that of some of the brutes, by characteristics which it is difficult, perhaps impossible, to define. But this only places in a more conspicuous point of view, those intellectual prerogatives to which he owes the undisputed empire of the globe; and which open to him a boundless prospect of progressive improvement, amid tribes doomed apparently to retain for ever their primeval rank in the scale of being. SECTION III. Still, however, the metaphysical (or rather the logical) question recurs: What are the particular faculties belonging to Man, which are denied entirely to the Brutes? In considering this question, it is proper always to remember, that the degree of evidence which it is possible for us to attain, is from the nature of the subject, far from being complete. In the case of our own species, we can judge of the it may be all of these, because all of sion. Each of the parts, likewise, may 1 Lib. i. cap. iii. T intellectual powers of other men, not only from the appearances of intelligence exhibited in their conduct, but from the direct information which they themselves are qualified to convey to us of the operations of which they are conscious. But, in the case of the brutes, all that we know of their nature is collected from outward signs, which are frequently obscure and equivocal; and which, in no instance whatever, afford the same satisfactory information we possess concerning the capacities of the human race. Where their external actions resemble those of man, we are naturally disposed to refer them to the same causes. When a dog howls, for example, in consequence of a blow, we conclude that he feels pain. When he fawns upon his master, after a long absence, we conclude that his apparent flow of affection is founded on something analogous to the power of memory. But still these inferences are not made with the same certainty as those we form concerning the powers of rational beings, who, by describing to us what passes within them, can afford us an opportunity of comparing their intellectual phenomena with our own. Notwithstanding, however, this circumstance, (which must be allowed to invalidate, to a certain degree, the force of our argument,) we are justified, I think, in adopting the foregoing conclusions, by the received maxim in natural philosophy, that similar effects are to be ascribed to similar causes. And it is on this principle that we are entitled, in my opinion, to reject as unphilosophical the Cartesian theory, which represents the brutes as mere machines. One thing is certain, that this is all the evidence which the nature of the subject admits of; and that, if we deny its legitimacy, we put an end at once to the inquiry.1 1 In the greater part of the following passage, Laplace appears to me to reason soundly. The analogy he mentions towards the close of it, between chemical affinities, and what he calls animal affinities, is too hypothetical to deserve much attention. Nor should I have thought it worth while to take notice of it here, had it not been for the respect which is justly due to the conjectures, however fanciful, of so illustrious an author. "L'Analogie est fondée sur la probabilité que les choses semblables ont des causes du même genre, et produisent les mêmes effets. Plus la similitude est parfaite, plus grande est cette probabilité. Ainsi nous jugeons sans Proceeding, then, on the maxim now mentioned, we must allow to the brutes the powers of Sensation, Perception, and Memory. Whether they possess the power of Recollection, is more doubtful. If some of the more sagacious of them do, it is certainly in a very inconsiderable degree. That they are not wholly destitute of the faculty of Conception, we may infer from this that some of them appear to dream, and to be affected with absent objects as if they were present. And that something very analogous to the Associating principle takes place in their minds, is evinced by numberless phenomena. Among these it is sufficient to mention the means which are employed in teaching bears to dance, by making them move on heated floors to the sound of musical instruments; and in training ancun doute, que des êtres pourvus des mêmes organes, exécutant les mêmes choses et communiquant ensemble, éprouvent les mêmes sensations, et sont mus par les mêmes désirs. La probabilité que les animaux qui se rapprochent de nous par leurs organes, ont des sensations analogues aux nôtres, quoiqu'un peu inférieure à celle qui est relative aux individus de notre espèce, est encore excessivement grande; et il a fallu toute l'influence des préjugés religieux, pour faire penser à quelques philosophes, que les animaux sont de purs automates. La probabilité de l'existence du sentiment décroît, à mesure que la similitude des organes avec les nôtres diminue; mais elle est toujours très forte, même pour les insectes. En voyant ceux d'une même espèce, exécuter des choses fort compliquées exactement de la même manière, de générations en générations et sans les avoir apprises; on est porté à croire qu'ils agissent par une sorte d'affinité, analogue à celle qui rapproche les molécules des cristaux, mais qui se mêlant au sentiment attaché à toute organisation animale, produit avec la régularité des combinaisons chimiques, des combinaisons beaucoup plus singulières: On pourroit peut-être nommer affinité animale ce mélange des affinités électives et du sentiment. Quoiqu'il existe beaucoup d'analogie entre l'organisation des plantes et celle des animaux; elle ne me paroît pas cependant suffisante pour étendre aux végétaux la faculté de sentir; comme rien n'autorise à la leur refuser."-Essai Philosophique sur les Probabilités, pp. 203, 204. In this comparison of the regular and complicated operations of certain insects, to the regularity of those chemical combinations which are exhibited in the phenomena of crystallization, Laplace goes, perhaps, a little farther than sound philosophy warrants; but his hypothesis of animal affinities is not without its value, as it affords a decisive proof of the contempt with which he regarded that theory which would represent the ingenuity displayed in the works of some of the insect tribes, as analogous to the mechanical arts of the human species, and as manifesting reason in the one case no less than in the other. In whatever way the fact was to be accounted for, Laplace seems never to have suspected that the ingenuity of the contrivance was to be referred to the animal. |