that brutes are merely endowed with sensa tion, and that they are wholly without any mental faculties bearing analogy to those of

man.

This speculative and eloquent writer considers the brain as a general internal sense; the grand receptacle for all impressions received by means of the external senses; which, being continued along the spinal marrow, and the nerves, is expanded over the whole body; forming an organic machine of which the senses are the parts to which the action of external objects is applied. He allows that other animals have this internal sense in common with man: and his view of this part of his subject appears sufficiently clear; since it is demonstrable, by anatomy, that the external senses, the brain, the spinal marrow, and what are considered the nerves, are all really parts and continuations of the same sensitive mass. But he goes further, and asserts, that "in brutes, the internal sense differs only from the external senses, by the faculty it possesses of retaining received impressions.

This faculty is alone sufficient to explain all the actions of animals, and to give us some idea of what passes within them:"— and again, "In man, the brain is proportionally larger than in any other animal, which is an evident proof of his being endowed with this internal material sense. What I mean to inculcate is, that this sense is infinitely superior to the other (in animals). It is subject to the commands of the spiritual substance, which, at pleasure, suppresses, or gives rise to all its operations. In the animal, this sense is the principle which determines all its movements; but, in man, it is only an intermediate and secondary cause of action."

After shewing, therefore, that the brain is merely an internal sense, capable of receiving and retaining impressions, and that it is possessed in common with man and inferior animals; this author attempts to prove, that it is the sole principle of action in the one, whilst in the other it is obedient to a higher, more mysterious powerful, and less definable, principle. In fine, that all

animals, except man, are the mere creatures of sensation.

Now, after no slight consideration of this very interesting subject, facts compel me to be of opinion that inferior animals have the same mental faculties that are possessed by man, or the greater part of them, only in a much less, and more limited, degree. I believe that mind, in whatever animal it may be found, will admit of the same definitions; and it is by the criterion of those definitions that its possession, either by man or inferior animals, must be tried and proved. It is a quality, or principle, so subtle, refined, mysterious, and various, as to quantity and capacity, that no two animals, even amongst the human race, have exactly the same proportions.

Amongst men, it must be allowed that all have the same component parts, both of body and mind, however those parts may vary as to power and capacity. Two vessels may be presented to our notice made of the same materials, having the same use, and the same name: they may both be goblets,

for instance, but, whilst one is capable only of containing the quantity of a pint, the other shall be found sufficiently large to contain a quart, and yet both vessels are goblets. The inhabitants of the least civilized countries of the world have the same general information; the same senses, external and internal, and the same faculties of perception, memory, association, imagination, judgement, and reason, in common with the most enlightened Europeans; though, for want of education and exercise, they have not been equally manifested amongst the former, as amongst the latter. This assertion cannot be disproved :—yet; how vast, how immeasurable, is the distance between the intellectual range of an Esquimeaux, or a New Zealander, and such a mind as that of NEWTON!-Yet are they all of the same species, they are all men. Surely there is less difference, as to mental capacity, between the most degraded of men, and the most intelligent of brutes, than is to be found between the highest and the lowest intellectual powers amongst men.

Perhaps it would neither be an unjust, nor a libellous, arrangement, to divide mankind, as they at present exist, into three classes;-those which must be considered below, those that are upon a level with, and those that rise above, the condition of brutes. Those who are best acquainted with the present state of millions of the human race in the remote, and uncultivated, parts of the earth, will be the least inclined to consider such a judgement as unwarrantable or harsh.

Whoever has reflected upon the condition of the inhabitants of Van Diemen's Land*, or the still more wretched natives of the Islands of Andaman in the East+, whose disgusting forms exhibit the most frightful images of animal degradation, of want, and misery, hitherto discovered within the limits of this globe; who have not sagacity to provide either clothing, or a place of ha

• See the account in Vancouver's Voyages.

+ Asiatic Researches, vol. iv. p. 401, and Syme's Embassy to Ava, ch. i, p. 129.