PART IV.

DISTINGUISHING POWERS OF THE HUMAN

INTELLECT.

CHAPTER I.

GENERAL VIEWS OF MAN'S SUPERIORITY.

AMONG the pretending illuminators of mankind, is a class of speculating philosophers, referred to in preceding pages, who tell us there is no difference in kind between the intellect of man and that of a brute. They maintain that the difference is merely in degree, not in kind; and in the way of illustration, they inform us that the disparity is greater between the intellect of a lobster and that of a horse than between the intellect of a horse and that of a man.

How they have been enabled to take the precise gauge and dimensions of the lobster's intellect, and to demonstrate the points of distinction between it and that of the horse, they have not told us; but by denying all difference in kind, and maintaining only a chain of degrees, running from the lowest order of sentient creatures up to man, they have not wanted zeal in attempting to show that man is not the fallen image of GOD, but the exalted image of a lobster.

CHAIN OF DEGREES.

There is, indeed, a chain of degrees. Nature seems to avoid, so far as possible, violent transitions. The passages from the mineral to the vegetable, from the vegetable to the animal, from the animal to the rational,* are made as gently as the case admits. But then the passages are really made. The vegetable is more than the mineral, the animal is more than the vegetable, and a rational mind is more than an animal.

Nor, in the regular course of nature, are there any intervening nondescripts between the great kingdoms and classes of being. Where any thing like these occurs, it is the result of some violation of nature's laws; an accident, which soon vanishes. Such apparent caprices are no more to be cited as illustrations of the steady and undeviating course of nature, than the accidental ripples on the surface of a river of the course of the stream. speculations of philosophers, drawn from supposed examples of hybridous life, are thoroughly unphilosophical, and betray as much ignorance of physiology as of the true principles of inductive logic.†

The

"The simplest combination of animal life, where sensation first manifests itself in matter, is found in mines, where, 'unmolested by winds, or changing temperature, infusoria or moulds cover the damp wall.' The proper element of infusoria, or mould, is albumen, which they receive from the mineral body to which they adhere; the mineral being the matrice of the mould. Its delicate tissue is composed chiefly of nitre, eighty-five per cent. of which is oxygen; it has a feeble circulation, with little or no sensation." "Sensation, circulation, and voluntary motion are the second simplest combination of sensation with matter." - Sensational Physiology; Laws of Causation, p. 102.

"Experiments have rendered it certain that hybridity in animals results from the absence of a proper degree of sensible heat. The mule that has hitherto been regarded as a hybrid, is so only from accidental circumstances. Prevost and Dumas, in repeating the experiments of Lewenhoeck, have discovered the hybridity of mules in northern climates to be caused by the absence of spermatic animalcules; while these being present in the mules of hot climates, explain the phenomena of reproduction. In this example, the law defines its degrees so clearly as to give us all the particu-. lars, namely, that, in northern climates, sensation is unfelt in the spermatic vessels by the hybrid, and reproduction is impossible; whereas a hot climate, in establishing the necessary degree of heat, produces the necessary supply of circulating fluid, whereby sensation in the spermatic vessels of the hybrid

WHEREIN MEN AND BRUTES ARE ALIKE.

In respect to animal life, man commences, in many respects, as low as the brute, and even lower. No brute animals at birth, and for months after, are as helpless as human infancy, or certainly not more so. Man steps below brutes at his origin, as if to take a position for the great leap with which he is to pass them.

We have followed man with the brute through the various sensations which they hold in common, and have also indicated those powers of which the brute seems, in some degree, to participate. We have seen, however, that these powers are in man associated with others, lifting them into a sphere of activity immeasurably higher than ever falls to the range of brute intellect. We are in subsequent pages to contemplate those other, those distinguishing powers.

Our knowledge of brute mind is mostly negative. I propose to show that there are certain powers of the human intellect, demonstrable by experience and observation, of which we have not a shadow of evidence that they pertain to brute intellect, and that they differ from every development of brute mind, not only in degree, but in kind.

DOMINION OF MAN.

There was science as well as poetry in what the royal minstrel flung from his harp, when he sung of man: "Thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honor; thou hast made him to have dominion over all the works of thy hands; thou hast put all things under him." The Septuagint reads, "Thou hast made him a little lower than Elohem;" that is, a little lower than God, or as God in miniature. And how like his Creator is man, in his dominion

is developed, and the animal resumes its place in the laws of causation, by becoming reproductive. Thus I have bridged over the chasm that has hitherto been leaped, and connected mineral, vegetable, and animal life by the chain of causation.". Ibid. p. 104.

over the world! Over all these vast mineral, vegetable, animal kingdoms, he holds lordly dominion; over them all he has such power and control, that there is no imaginable form of strength, utility, or beauty, to which he cannot subdue the mountain rocks; no quality or condition grateful to the taste, nutritious to the body, or pleasing to the eye, to which he cannot bring the wild vegetable creation; and no purpose of convenience, labor, or recreation to which he cannot make the animal tribes subservient.

IN WHAT MANS POWER OF DOMINION CONSISTS.

The power of man over the lower creation results partly from his superior physical organization, particularly that of his hand, his most distinctive physical characteristic, but more especially from the superior endowments of his mind. It is not the want of speech that holds the brute creation in relative abjectness; for brutes have language, as well as men, and that adequate to express all they know. That it is neither the cunning of the hand, nor the peculiar organs of speech, that distinguish man from the brute, as some affirm, is evident from the fact that a human being without hands, and dumb from his birth, has developed all the distinguishing properties of the human intellect.

If we speak of physical strength, what is the power of man compared with those vast mountains of rock which sink to plains before him, compared with those huge structures and massive columns of architecture which tower under his little hands to the skies? What is the puny arm of man compared with the mighty forests, the wildernesses of stately cedars and majestic oaks, which recede from his presence, and by his magic touch give place to smiling and verdant fields? What but a feeble speck is man on the great ocean, whose proud, swelling waves, angry billows, and furious tempests he fearlessly encounters ? What is the strength of man compared with that of the ox, the horse, the elephant, which he so readily subjects to the yoke of his dominion?

How, then, is man enabled to maintain this dominion over the world? The only philosophical answer is, By the superior powers of his mind. It is because he knows how. By virtue of superior intellectual endowments, he is enabled to apprehend means of appropriating all the laws and powers of nature to his use, thus making them to become, as it were, his own sinews and muscles, guided by his wisdom, and obedient to his will.

LIKENESS OF THE HUMAN TO THE DIVINE INTELLECT.

Let us notice, in this respect, the striking resemblance of the human mind to THAT in whose image* it was created. When we look upon the four great kingdoms of nature, the mineral, the vegetable, the animal, the mental, upon the globe itself which we inhabit, and the shining worlds around us; upon the boundless varieties of created beauty in the plants, the flowers, the trees of the forest; upon the numberless surpassing wonders of animal organization; upon the more wonderful creation and endowments of human intellect; and finally, upon the most sublime and glorious of all objects in creation - the moral government divinely established and maintained over the universe; and then, when we consider that all this was conceived, planned, perfected by the mind of God, we are compelled to exclaim, How amazing the powers of that mind!

And in addition to the inherent powers of his personal mind, he employs all his works as instruments of his will. He makes certain things means of accomplishing others, and these again means to others; the number ever rising in an infinite progression. Thus all matter, all created beings, all the laws and operations of nature, from motes to worlds, and from worlds to systems of

* "And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them." Genesis i. 26, 27.