not.

Whence does man obtain this power? Some say it is the human hand which has made man supreme. It is, no doubt, a wonderful machine; a box of tools in itself. The size and strength of the thumb, and the power of opposing it to the extremities of the fingers, distinguishes, according to most anatomists, the human hand from that of the quadrumanous animals. In those monkeys which are nearest to man, the thumb is so short and weak, and the fingers so long and slender, that their tips can scarcely be brought in opposition. Excellent for climbing, they are not good for taking up small objects or supporting large ones. But the hand of man could accomplish little, without the mind behind it. It was therefore a good remark of Galen, that "man is not the wisest of animals because he has a hand; but God has given him a hand because he is the wisest of animals."

The size of the human brain, relatively greater than that of almost any other animal; man's structure, adapting him to stand erect; his ability to exist in all climates; his power of subsisting on varied food: all these facts of his physical nature are associated with his superior mental power, but do not produce it. The question recurs, What enables him to stand at the head of the animal creation?

Perhaps the chief apparent distinctions between man and other animals are these:

1. The lowest races of men use tools; other animals do not.

2. The lowest human beings possess a verbal language; other animals have

none.

3. Man has the capacity of self-culture, as an individual; other animals have

not.

4. Human beings, associated in society, are capable of progress in civilization, by means of science, art, liter

5. Men have a capacity for religion; no animal, except man, has this.

The lowest races of men use tools, but no other animal does this. This is so universally admitted by science, that the presence of the rudest tools of stone is considered a sufficient trace of the presence of man. If stone hatchets or hammers or arrow-heads are found in any stratum, though no human bones are detected, anthropologists regard this as a sufficient proof of the existence of human beings in the period indicated by such a geologic formation. The only tools used by animals in procuring food, in war, or in building their homes, are their natural organs; their beaks, teeth, claws, etc. It may be added that man alone wears clothes; other animals being sufficiently clothed by nature. No animals make a fire, though they often suffer from cold; but there is no race of men unacquainted with the use of fire.1

No animals possess a verbal language. Animals can remember some of the words used by men, and associate with them their meaning. But this is not the use of language. It is merely the memory of two associated facts-as when the animal recollects where he found food, and goes to the same place to look for it again. Animals have different cries, indicating different wants. They use one cry to call their mate, another to terrify their prey. But this is not the use of verbal language. Human language implies not merely an acquaintance with the meaning of particular words, but the power of putting them together in a sentence. Animals have no such language as this; for, if they had, it would have been learned by men. Man has the power of learning any verbal language. Adelung and Vater reckon over three thousand languages spoken by men, and any man can learn any of them. The negroes speak their own languages in their own countries, they speak Arabic in North Africa, they learn to speak English, 1 It is a mistake to say that the Tasmanians de not use fire.

French, and Spanish in America, and Oriental languages when they go to the East. If any animals had a verbal language, with its vocabulary and grammar, men would long ago have learned it, and would have been able to converse with them.

Again, no animal except man is capable of self-culture, as an individual. Animals are trained by external influences; they do not teach themselves. An old wolf is much more cunning than a young one, but he has been made so by the force of circumstances. You can teach your dog tricks, but no dog has ever taught himself any. Yet the lowest savages teach themselves to make tools, to ornament their paddles and clubs, and acquire certain arts by diligent effort. Birds will sometimes practice the tunes which they hear played, till they have learned them. They will also sometimes imitate each other's songs. That is, they possess the power of vocal imitation. But to imitate the sounds we hear is not self-culture. It is not developing a new power, but it is exercising in a new way a natural gift. Yet we must admit that in this habit of birds there is the rudiment, at least, of selfeducation.

All races of men are capable of progress in civilization. Many, indeed, remain in a savage state for thousands of years, and we cannot positively prove that any particular race which has always been uncivilized is capable of civilization. But we are led to believe it from having known of so many tribes of men who have emerged from apathy, ignorance, and barbarism into the light of science and art. So it was with all the Teutonic races- -the Goths, Germans, Kelts, Lombards, Scandinavians. So it was with the Arabs, who roamed for thousands of years over the deserts, a race of ignorant robbers, and then, filled with the great inspiration of Islam, flamed up into a brilliant coruscation of science, literature, art, military success, and profound learning. What great civilizations have grown up in China, India, Persia, Assyria, Babylon, Phoenicia, Egypt, Greece, Rome, Car

thage, Etruria! But no such progress has ever appeared among the animals. As their parents were, five thousand years ago, so, essentially, are they now.

Nor are animals religious, in the sense of worshiping unseen powers, higher than themselves. My horse showed a sense of the supernatural, but this is not worship.

These are some of the most marked points of difference between man and all other animals. Now these can all be accounted for by the hypothesis in which Locke and Leibnitz both agreed; namely, that while animals are capable of reasoning about facts, they are incapable of abstract ideas. Or, we may say with Coleridge, that while animals, in common with man, possess the faculty of understanding, they do not possess that of reason. Coleridge seems to have intended by this exactly what Locke and Leibnitz meant by their statement. When my dog Don heard the word "apple," he thought of the particular concrete apple under the tree; and not of apples in general, and their relation to pears, peaches, etc. Don understood me when I told him to go and get an apple, and obeyed; but he would not have understood me if I had remarked to him that apples were better than pears, more healthy than peaches, not so handsome as grapes. I should then have gone into the region of abstract and general ideas.

Now it is precisely the possession of this power of abstract thought which will explain the superiority of man to all other animals. It explains the use of tools; for a tool is an instrument prepared not for one special purpose, but to be used generally, in certain ways. A baboon, like a man, might pick up a particular stone with which to crack a particular nut; but the ape does not make and keep a stone hammer, to be used on many similar occasions. A box of tools contains a collection of saws, planes, draw-knives, etc., not made to use on one occasion merely, but made for sawing, cutting, and planing purposes generally.

Still more evident is it that the power

of abstraction is necessary for verbal language. We do not here use the common term "articulate speech," for we can conceive of animals articulating their vocal sounds. But "a word" is an abstraction. The notion is lifted out of the concrete particular fact, and deposited in the abstract general term. All words, except proper names, are abstract; and to possess and use a verbal language is impossible, without the possession of this mental faculty.

In regard to self-culture, it is clear that for any steady progress one must keep before his mind an abstract idea of what he wishes to do. This enables him to rise above impulse, passion, instinct, habit, circumstance. By the steady contemplation of the proposed aim, one can arrange circumstances, restrain impulse, direct one's activity, and become really free.

In like manner races become developed in civilization by the impact of abstract ideas. Sometimes it is by coming in contact with other civilized nations, which gives them an ideal superior to anything before known. Sometimes the motive power of their progress is the reception of truths of science, art, literature, or religion.

It is not necessary to show that without abstract, universal, and necessary ideas no religion is possible; for religion being the worship of unseen powers, conceived as existing, as active, as spiritual, necessarily implies these ideas in the mind of the worshiper.

We find, then, in the soul of animals all active, affectionate, and intelligent capacities, as in that of man. The only difference is that man is capable of abstract ideas, which give him a larger liberty of action, which enable him to adopt an aim and pursue it, and which change his affections from an instinctive attachment into a principle of generous love. Add, then, to the animal soul the capacity for abstract ideas, and it would rise at once to the level of man. Meantime, in a large part of their nature, they have the same faculties with ourselves. They share our emotions, and we theirs. They are

Are they immortal? To discuss this question would require more space than we can here give to it. For our own part, we fully believe in the continued existence of all souls, at the same time assuming their continued advance. The law of life is progress; and one of the best features in the somewhat unspiritual theory of Darwin is its profound faith in perpetual improvement. This theory is the most startling optimism that has ever been taught, for it makes the law of the whole universe to be perpetual progress.

Many of the arguments for the immortality of man cannot indeed be used for our dumb relations, the animals. We cannot argue from their universal faith in a future life; nor contend that they need an immortality on moral grounds, to recompense their good conduct and punish their wickedness. We might indeed adduce a reason implied in our Saviour's parable, and believe that the poor creatures who have received their evil things in this life will be comforted in another. Moreover we might find in many animals qualities fitting them for a higher state. There are animals, as we have seen, who show a fidelity, courage, generosity, often superior to what we see in man. The dogs who have loved their master, more than food, and starved to death on his grave, are surely well fitted for a higher existence. Jesse tells a story of a cat which was being stoned by cruel boys. Men went by, and did not interfere; but a dog, that saw it, did. He drove away the boys, and then took the cat to his kennel, licked her all over with his tongue, and his conduct interested people, who brought her milk. The canine nurse took care of her till she was well, and the cat and dog remained fast friends ever after. Such an action in a man would have been called heroic; and we think such a dog would not be out of place in heaven.

Yet it is not so much on particular cases of animal superiority that we rely, but on the difficulty of conceiving, in

any sense, of the destruction of life. The principle of life, whether we call it soul or body, matter or spirit, escapes all observation of the senses. All that we know of it by observation is, that beside the particles of matter which compose an organized body, there is something else, not cognizable by the senses, which attracts and dismisses them, modifies and coördinates them. The unity of the body is not to be found in its sensible phenomena, but in something which escapes the senses. Into the vortex of that life material molecules are being continually absorbed, and from it they are perpetually discharged. If death means the dissolution of the body, we die many times in the course of our earthly career, for every body is said by human anatomists to be changed in all its particles once in seven years. What then remains, if all the particles go? The principle of organization remains, and this invisible, persistent principle constitutes the identity of every organized body. If I say that I have the same body when I am

When

fifty which I had at twenty, it is because I mean by "body" that which continues unaltered amid the fast-flying particles of matter. This life-principle makes and remakes the material frame; that body does not make it. what we call death intervenes, all that we can assert is that the life principle has done, wholly and at once, what it has always been doing gradually and in part. What happens to the material particles, we see: they become detached from the organizing principle, and relapse into simply mechanical and chemical conditions. What has happened to that organizing principle we neither see nor know; and we have absolutely no reason at all for saying that it has ceased to exist.

This is as true of plants and of animals as of men; and there is no reason for supposing that when these die, their principle of life is ended. It probably has reached a crisis, which consists in the putting on of new forms and ascending into a higher order of organized existence.

James Freeman Clarke.

John James Piatt.