admit the possibility of a spiritual nature organised without material properties. For my part, omitting all reference to deductions beyond the limits of strict philosophy, as well as the evidence from any supposed intuitive belief of immortality —against which, as an original element of our constitution, all reasoning would of course be vain-I am persuaded that no arguments can be adduced in support of man's immortality, which are not equally conclusive in favour of the immortality of brutes:—a supposition that would scarcely be weakened if the alleged intuitive sentiment, portrayed in many an eloquent strain as an innate longing for immortality, were haply as some, though surely not the divinest order of thinkers, might deem, in its origin but an instinctive shrinking from death-the same feeling essentially as is implanted in the inferior races for the purpose of self-preservation, though assuming in man the colour of so noble a passion from the larger range of his capacity, enabling him to project his views more remotely into the future; from the force of imagination; and from the influence of certain transmitted notions. Be this as it may, the absence of such an intuition in the tribes beneath us would not disprove their destination to another life, as many things, equally strange and magnificent, may be in reserve for man, of which he has now no shadow of conception, or a solitary glimmering in the remotest depths of consciousness. If on principles of mere reason it were much to say that any finite being, or what has had a beginning, will have no end, it is not less perhaps to affirm that any thing possessed of life and intelligence will finally perish: while if death is synonymous with extinction in the case of the lower creatures, the whole analogy of nature, animal and vegetable, would be against the future existence of man, in any sense comprehending the idea of identity. In touching on the subject of this paper, the reader of Coleridge will perceive that I have made no allusion to a distinction often insisted upon by that profound thinker, between Reason and the Understanding, taken in the somewhat arbitrary though self-consistent sense attached to those words in the Kantian philosophy, which divides the human mind into Vernunft, reason or the intuitive faculty, and Verstand, understanding or intellect; the latter of which endowments is attributed by Coleridge to the lower creatures or some of them, but not the former, even where phenomena present themselves betokening what he calls the dawning of a moral nature. My object has been not so much to indicate the precise limits to which the faculties of brutes extend, whether per se, or in comparison with those of man, as, in illustrating their claim to the possession of an intellectual principle or mind, differing not in essence, but in degree and manifestation, from our own, to glance at a few problems connected with the circumstance. An incidental remark or two may close these reflections. Whether the changes to be anticipated in the progress of society will possibly include the application of certain chemical or other processes to vegetable products, so as to ensure articles of diet superseding all pretence for the system of slaughter now perpetrated on the lower creatures, most of them perfectly inoffensive, and all more or less interesting for the traits of affection or intellect or both which they manifest; and whether it is altogether visionary to suppose that a time may come when the prevalent usages will appear about as repulsive, if not quite so barbarous, as the practice of cannibalism is deemed in our own,-are questions that may be left to the scientific or other speculator to discuss. But that in proportion to the culture of human nature, the inferior races, offering in their existence and isolation most profound and perplexing mysteries, will be brought into much more varied and kindly relationship with man; and that the needless infliction of pain on the meanest of them, not to say the deprivation of life from mere wantonness or amusement, will rank among the immoralities, no reasonable theory as to the position or prospects of our species can well admit a doubt. The perceptions, meanwhile, are undeserving the name either of philosophy or humanity, that can make it a reproach to an ethical scheme that it comprehends justice and mercy to the animal creation: nor is any system of education other than essentially defective, which fails to inculcate a feeling of sympathy and tenderness towards everything that breathes. Certain aspects of the subject, in particular, are calculated to awaken both curiosity and awe in minds of reflective cast. In a passage not a little striking and suggestive, in relation to the brute-worship recorded of the ancient Egyptians, and which is supposed to have been a symbolic though perverted expression of the sacredness attached to Life,-"I am sure," says Miss Martineau, "that we are wrong in the other extreme, in the levity or utter thoughtlessness with which we regard the races of inferior animals, which have shared with ours, for thousands of years, the yet unsolved mystery of sentient existence. and man have met hourly for all these thousands of years without having found any means of communication; without having done any thing to bridge over the gulf which so separates them that they appear mere phantoms to each other. The old Egyptian priests recognised the difficulty, and made a mistake upon it;-disastrous enough. We, for the most part, commit the other great mistake of not recognising the mystery.' They Besides a belief in the sanctity of all Life, however, as a mysterious emanation from one Central Source, the doctrine of metempsychosis, which prevailed in ancient Egypt and other oriental countries, may have had something to do with the worship of the brute creation :—a worship with which, if a truer philosophy forbids us at all to sympathise, a benign one at least may find some echo to its musings, like * Eastern Life, Present and Past, vol. i. p. 313. с the sound of sweet chimes at a distance, in the words with which the Ancient Mariner winds up his wondrous story: He prayeth well, who loveth well He prayeth best, who loveth best PHILOSOPHY OF THOUGHT; OR, MODES OF PERCEPTION AND JUDGMENT. A LEADING distinction between men of enlarged and philosophic genius, and the uninformed multitude, appears to be that the former perceive, at least in part, the reasons or causes of things, while the latter perceive only the things themselves. But as to practical advantages, with reference particularly to individuals, and in a highly civilised state of society, where law and conventional usage have so much sway, and the results of discovery are diffused among the most illiterate, there is considerable equality between the two classes. The less accomplished bear some resemblance to a man who sees the driftings of the clouds, and the agitation of the woods or waves in a storm, but whose ear is utterly closed to the sounds of the wind by which the phenomena are produced. The more gifted hear the sounds as well as see the sights, though little able in consequence to control the elements, or avert the effects of their commotion; while the imaginative power is perhaps less at work on what in the other case would seem but as a picture set in motion by some secret spell. SOME ideas rush into the mind ready formed, like Minerva issuing from the brain of Jupiter; while others are most gradual in their formation, first showing themselves in a partial or indistinct manner, like the moon slowly emerging |