even if they do, the word instinct is a very
vague word—loose and large enough to cover
an abyss which our knowledge has not sounded.
And, indeed, in proportion as an animal, like
the dog, becomes cultivated by intercourse, his
instincts become weaker, and his ideas, formed
by experience (viz. his mind), more developed,
often to the conquest of the instincts themselves.
Hence, with his usual candour, Dr. Abercrombie,
in contending ' that everything mental ceases to
exist after death, when we know that everything
corporeal continues to exist, is a gratuitous
assumption contrary to every rule of
philosophical inquiry,'—feels compelled, by his
reasoning, to admit the probability of a future
life even to the lower animals. His words are:
'To this mode of reasoning it has been
objected that it would go to establish an
immaterial principle in the lower animals, which
in them exhibits many of the phenomena of
mind. I have only to answer, be it so. There are
in the lower animals many of the phenomena
of mind, and with regard to these we also
contend that they are entirely distinct from
anything we know of the properties of matter,
which is all that we mean, or can mean, by
being immaterial.'*  Am I then driven to admit
that if man's mind is immaterial and imperishable,
so also is that of the ape and the ant?"

* Abercrombie's Intellectual Powers, p. 26.
Fifteenth edition.

"I own," said Faber, with his peculiar smile,
arch and genial, "that if I were compelled to
make that admission, it would not shock my
pride. I do not presume to set any limit to
the goodness of the Creator; and should be
as humbly pleased as the Indian, if in

                                         '——yonder sky,
    My faithful dog should bear me company.'

You are too familiar with the works of that
Titan in wisdom and error, Descartes, not to
recollect the interesting correspondence
between the urbane philosopher and our combative
countryman, Henry More,†  on this very
subject; in which certainly More has the best of it
when Descartes insists on reducing what he
calls the soul (l'âme) of brutes into the same
kind of machines as man constructs from
inorganised matter. The learning, indeed, lavished
on the insoluble question involved in the
psychology of the inferior animals, is a proof at
least of the all-inquisitive, redundant spirit of
man.‡   We have almost a literature in itself
devoted to endeavours to interpret the language
of brutes.§   Dupont de Nemours has discovered
that dogs talk in vowels, using only two consonants
G, Z, when they are angry. He asserts
that cats employ the same vowels as dogs; but
their language is more affluent in consonants,
including M, N, B, R, V, F. How many laborious
efforts have been made to define and to construe
the song of the nightingale! One version of
that song by Beckstein, the naturalist, published
in 1840, I remember to have seen. And I heard
a lady, gifted with a singularly charming voice,
chaunt the mysterious vowels with so exquisite
a pathos, that one could not refuse to believe
her when she declared that she fully
comprehended the bird's meaning, and gave to the
nightingale's warble the tender interpretation of
her own woman's heart.

† Oeuvres de Descartes, vol. x. p. 178, et seq.
(Cousin's edition).

‡ M. Tissot, the distinguished Professor of Philosophy
at Dijon, in his recent work, La Vie dans
l'Homme, p. 255, gives a long and illustrious list of
of philosophers who assign a rational soul (âme) to
the inferior animals, though he truly adds, " that
they have not always the courage of their opinion."

§ Some idea of the extent of research and imagination
bestowed on this subject may be gleaned from the
sprightly work of Pierquin de Gembloux, Idiomologie
des Animaux, published at Paris, 1844.

"But leaving all such discussions to their
proper place amongst the Curiosities of
Literature, I come in earnest to the question you
have so earnestly raised, and to me the distinction
between man and the lower animals in reference
to a spiritual nature designed for a future
existence, and the mental operations whose uses
are bounded to an existence on earth, seems
ineffaceably clear. Whether ideas or even perceptions
be innate or all formed by experience is a speculation
for metaphysicians, which, so far as affects
the question of an immaterial principle, I am quite
willing to lay aside. I can well understand that
a materialist may admit innate ideas in Man, as
he must admit them in the instinct of brutes,
tracing them to hereditary predispositions. On
the other hand, we know that the most devout
believers in our spiritual nature have insisted,
with Locke, in denying any idea, even of the
Deity, to be innate.

"But here comes my argument. I care not
how ideas are formed, the material point is how
are the capacities to receive ideas, formed. The
ideas may all come from experience, but the
capacity to receive the ideas must be inherent.
I take the word capacity as a good plain
English word, rather than the more technical
word 'receptivity,' employed by Kant. And
by capacity I mean the passive power* to receive
ideas, whether in man or in any living thing by
which ideas are received. A man and an
elephant is each formed with capacities to receive
ideas suited to the several place in the universe
held by each.

* " Faculty is active power; capacity is passive
power."—Sir W. Hamilton, Lectures on Metaphysics
and Logic, vol. i. p. 178.

"The more I look through nature the more I
find that on all varieties of organised life is
carefully bestowed the capacity to receive the
impressions, be they called perceptions or ideas,
which are adapted to the uses each creature is
intended to derive from them. I find, then, that
Man alone is endowed with the capacity to
receive the ideas of a God, of Soul, of Worship, of
a Hereafter. I see no trace of such a capacity
in the inferior races; nor, however their intelligence
may be refined by culture, is such capacity
ever apparent in them.

"But, wherever capacities to receive impressions