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On the Intellectual Faculty of Brutes.

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Upon what hypothesis can we account of different countries and kinds, some for a degree of foresight and penetra-philosophers have maintained that tion such as this? Or will it be sug- brutes are endowed with a soul, tho' gested, as a solution of the difficulty, essentially inferior to that of men; and that a Dog may possibly become capa- to this soul they have allowed imble in a great measure of understanding mortality. Father Bougeant, a Jesuit, human discourse, and of reasoning and formerly published a treatise expressacting accordingly; and that, in the pre-ly on this subject, entitled, A Philososent instance, the villain had either uttered his design in soliloquy, or imparted it to an accomplice, in the hearing of the animal?

It has been much disputed whether the brutes have any language whereby they can express their minds to each other; or whether all the noise they make consists only of cries inarticulate, and unintelligible even to themselves. We may indeed, from analogy, conclude, with great reason, that some of the cries of beasts are really expressions of their sentiments; but whether one beast is capable of forming a design, and communicating that design by any kind of language to others, is what I shall leave to the judgment of the reader, after submitting to his consideration the following instance:

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phical Amusement on the Language of Brutes, in which he affirms that they are animated by evil spirits, or devils. The strangeness of this doctrine has induced me to give the outline of his arguments, since they cannot fail to prove entertaining to the reader:"Reason (says he) naturally inclines us to believe that beasts have a spiritual soul; and the only thing that opposes this sentiment is, the consequences that might be inferred from it. If brutes have a soul, that soul must be either matter or spirit; it must be one of the two, and yet you dare affirm neither. You dare not say it is matter, because you must then necessarily suppose matter to be capable of thinking; nor will you say that it is spirit, this opinion bringing with it consequences A sparrow finding a nest that a mar- contrary to the principles of religion; tin had just built, standing very conve- and this, among others, that man would niently for him, possessed himself of differ from beasts only by the degrees it. The martin, seeing the usurper of plus and minus, which would demoin her house, called for help to expel lish the very foundation of all religion. him. A thousand martins came full | Therefore, if I can elude all these conspeed, and attacked the sparrow; but sequences; if I can assign to beasts a the latter being covered on every side, spiritual soul, without striking at the and presenting only his large beak at doctrines of religion; it is evident that the entrance of the nest, was invul- my system, being moreover the most nerable, and made the boldest of them agreeable to reason, is the only warwho durst approach him repent of rantable hypothesis. Now I shall and their temerity. After a quarter of an can do it, with the greatest ease imahour's combat, all the martins disap-ginable. I even have means, by the peared. The sparrow thought he had got the better, and the spectators judged that the martins had abandoned their undertaking. Not in the least. Immediately they returned to the charge; and, each of them having procured a little of that tempered earth with which they make their nests, they all at once fell upon the sparrow, and inclosed him in the nest, to perish there, though they could not drive him thence. Can it be imagined that the martins could have been able to hatch and concert this design all of them together, without speaking to each other, or without some medium of communication equi

same method, to explain many very obscure passages in the holy Scriptures, and to resolve some very great difficulties which are not well confuted. This we shall unfold in a more particular manner.

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Religion teaches us, that the devils, from the very moment they had sinned, were reprobate, and that they were doomed to burn for ever in hell; but the Church has not yet determined whether they do actually endure the torments to which they are condemned. It may then be thought that they do not yet suffer them, and that the exe cution of the verdict brought against them is reserved for the day of final judgment.-Now, what I pretend to From all these extraordinary endow-infer from hence is, that, till doomsments, manifested by brute animals, day comes, God, in order not to suffer

valent to language?

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On the Intellectual Faculty of Brutes.

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so many legions of reprobate spirits to | from shocking, pleases me mightily. be of no use, has distributed them I with gratitude admire the goodness through the several spaces of the world, of the Creator, who gave me so many to serve the designs of his providence, little devils to serve and amuse me. and make his omnipotence to appear. If I am told that these poor devils are Some, continuing in their natural state, doomed to suffer eternal tortures, I busy themselves in tempting men, in admire God's decrees, but I have no seducing and tormenting them; either manner of share in that dreadful senimmediately, as Job's devil, and those tence; I leave the execution of it to that lay hold of human bodies; or by the sovereign Judge; and, notwiththe ministry of sorcerers or phantoms. standing this, I live with my little 'These wicked spirits are those devils, as I do with a multitude of whom the Scripture calls the powers of people, of whom religion informs me darkness, or the powers of the air. that a great number shall be damned. God, with the others, makes millions of But the cure of a prejudice is not to be beasts of all kinds, which serve for the effected in a moment; it is done by uses of men, which fill the universe, time and reflection: give me leave and cause the wisdom and omnipo- then lightly to touch upon this difficulty tence of the Creator to be admired. By in order to observe a very important that means I can easily conceive, on thing to you. the one hand, how the devils can tempt us; and, on the other, how beasts can think, know, have sentiments, and a spiritual soul, without any way striking at the doctrines of religion. I am no longer surprised to see them have forecast, memory, and judgment. I should rather have occasion to wonder at their having no more, since their soul very likely is more perfect than ours. But I discover the reason of this: it is because, in beasts as well as in ourselves, the operations of the mind are dependent on the material organs of the machine to which it is united; and, those organs being grosser and less perfect than in us, it follows, that the knowledge, the thoughts, and the other spiritual operations, of the beasts, must of course be less perfect than ours: and, if these proud spirits know their own dismal state, what an humiliation must it be to them thus to see themselves reduced to the condition of beasts! But, whether they know it or no, so shameful a degradation is still, with regard to them, the primary effect of the divine vengeance I just mentioned; it is an anticipated hell."

Having mentioned the prejudices against this hypothesis, such particularly as the pleasure which people of sense and religion take in beasts and birds, especially all sorts of domestic animals; he proceeds, "Do we love beasts for their own sakes! No. As they are altogether strangers to human society, they can have no other appointment but that of being useful and amusing. And what care we whether it be a devil or any other creature that amuses us? The thought of it, far No. 26.-VOL. III.

Persuaded, as we are, that beasts have intelligence, have we not all of us a thousand times pitied them for the excessive evils which the majority of them are exposed to, and in reality suffer? How unhappy is the condition of horses! we are apt to say, upon seeing a horse whom an unmerciful carman is murdering with blows. How miserable is a dog whom they are breaking for hunting! How dismal is the fate of beasts living in woods! they are perpetually exposed to the injuries of the weather; always seized with apprehensions of becoming the prey of hunters, or of some wilder animal; for ever obliged, after long fatigue, to look out for some poor insipid food; often suffering cruel hunger; and subject, moreover, to illness and death! If men are subject to a multitude of miseries that overwhelm them, religion acquaints us with the reason of it; viz. the being born sinners. But what crimes can beasts have committed by birth, to be subject to evils so very cruel? What are we, then, to think of the horrible excesses of miseries undergone by beasts? miseries, indeed, far greater than those endured by men. This is, in any other system, an incomprehensible mystery; whereas nothing is more easy to be conceived from the system I propose. The rebellious spirits deserve a punishment still more rigorous, and happy is it for them that their punishment is deferred. In a word, God's goodness is vindicated, man himself is justified : for what right can we have, without necessity, and often in the way of mere diversion, to take away the life of mil X

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On the Intellectual Faculty of Brutes.

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lions of beasts, if God had not author- | mischievous, a dog so full of envy, a ized us so to do? And beasts being cat so malicious? as sensible as ourselves of pain and death, how could a just and merciful God have given man that privilege, if they were not so many guilty victims of the divine vengeance?

"But hear still something more convincing, and of greater consequence: beasts, by nature, are extremely vicious. We know well that they never sin, because they are not free; but this is the only condition wanting to make them sinners. The voracious birds and beasts of prey are cruel. Many insects of one and the same species devour one another. Cats are perfidious and ungrateful; monkeys are mischievous; and dogs envious. All beasts in general are jealous and revengeful to excess; not to mention many other vices we observe in them: and at the same time that they are by nature so very vicious, they have, say we, neither the liberty nor any help to resist the bias that hurries them into so many bad actions. They are, according to the schools, necessitated to do evil, to disconcert the general order, to commit whatever is most contrary to the notion we have of natural justice, and to the principles of virtue. What monsters are these, in a world originally created for order and justice to reign in! This is, in good part, what formerly persuaded the Manicheans, that there were of necessity two order of things, one good, and the other bad; and that the beasts were not the work of the good principle: a monstrous error!

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But how then shall we believe that beasts came out of the hands of their Creator with qualities so very strange! If man is so very wicked and corrupt, it is because he has himself through sin perverted the happy nature God had given him at his creation. Of two things, then, we must say one: either that God has taken delight in making beasts so vicious as they are, and of giving us in them models of what is most shameful in the world; or that they have, like man, original sin, which has perverted their primitive nature. The first of these propositions finds very difficult access to the mind, and is an express contradiction to the holy Scriptures, which say, that whatever came out of God's hands, at the time of the creation of the world, was good, yea, very good. What good can there be in a monkey's being so very

"But then many authors have pretended, that beasts, before man's fall, were different from what they are now; and that it was in order to punish man that they became so wicked. But this opinion is a mere supposition, of which there is not the least footstep in holy Scripture. It is a pitiful subterfuge, to elude a real difficulty: this at most might be said of the beasts with whom man has a sort of correspondence; but not at all of the birds, fishes, and insects, which have no manner of relation to him.

We must then have recourse to the second proposition, that the nature of beasts has, like that of man, been corrupted by some original sin: another hypothesis, void of foundation, and equally inconsistent with reason and religion, in all the systems which have been hitherto espoused concerning the souls of beasts. What party are we to take? Why, admit of my system, and all is explained. The souls of beasts are refractory spirits, which have made themselves guilty towards God. The sin in beasts is no original sin: it is a personal crime, which has corrupted and perverted their nature in its whole substance; hence all the vices and corruption we observe in them, though they can be no longer criminal, because God, by irrecoverably reprobating them, has at the same time divested them of their liberty."

These quotations contain the strength of Father Bougeant's hypothesis, which also hath had its followers; but the reply to it is obvious. Beasts, though remarkably mischievous, are not completely so; they are in many instances capable of gratitude and love, which devils cannot possibly be. The very same passions that are in the brutes exist in the human nature; and if we chose to argue from the existence of those passions, and the ascendency they have over mankind at some times, we may say with as great justice, that the souls of men are devils, as that the souls of brutes are. All that can be reasonably inferred from the greater prevalency of the malignant passions among the brutes than among men, is, that the former have less rationality than men and accordingly it is found, that among savages, who exercise their reason less than other men, every spe cies of barbarity is practised without being deemed a crime.

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On the Treatment of Children.

Upon the whole, it is impossible to deduce this variety of action, in animals, from a general and uniform instinct only. For they accommodate their operations to times and circumstances. They combine; they chuse the favourable moment; they avail themselves of the occasion; and seem to receive instruction by experience. Many of their operations announce reflection: the bird repairs a shattered nest, instead of constructing instinctively a new one: the hen, which has been robbed of her eggs, changes her place in order to lay the remainder with more security: the cat discovers both care and artifice in concealing her kittens. Again, it is evident, that, on many occasions, animals know their faults and mistakes, and correct them; they sometimes contrive the most ingenious methods of obtaining their ends, and, when one method fails, have recourse to another; and they have, without doubt, a kind of language for the mutual communication of their ideas. How is all this to be accounted for, unless we suppose them endowed with the powers of perceiving, thinking, remembering, comparing, and judging? They certainly have these powers in a degree inferior to the human species, and form classes below them in the graduated scale of intelligent beings; but, their actions not being directed to moral ends, are consequently not accountable and proper subjects for reward or punishment in a future world.

On the Treatment of Children.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE IMPERIAL
MAGAZINE.

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experience has confirmed me in the opinion, that love, and not fear, is the most effectual incitement to goodness in a child's mind:-fear, perhaps, must be resorted to in peculiar and very inveterate cases, and it is necessary to preserve a strict sense of subordination, which may be called fear; but every child, who is kindly and rationally treated, easily perceives that his welfare is promoted by our control over him, and that his obedience is a source of improvement and happiness. Now, when that required obedience is imbittered by a harsh manner and by severe words, when we evidently exercise our power in anger and resentment, and apparently to gratify our own revengeful feelings, the culprit, instead of being led to the consideration of his own fault, has some of his worst passions roused, to repel and resist our unkindness. We ought not to become the enemy of those we find it necessary to punish: if we are Christians, we shall understand this; for does not Jesus Christ command us to forgive our erring brethren

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even until seventy times seven." Let us not think that our conduct to little children ought not to be regulated by the same heavenly precepts of mercy and of truth.

God has made no mental distinctions in regard to rank and station: the child of the meanest peasant ranks as high, in an intellectual, moral, and religious view, as the son of a prince. The gift of immortality, the belief in an all-wise and merciful Providence, is of the same value to both. "Take heed that ye despise not one of these little ones," is the benignant language of our Saviour. The influence of fear SIR,-The Wrongs of Children are a is often had recourse to from ignorance copious subject for remark and com- of the human mind, as well as from plaint. Why we should think our-neglect of the divine law of love. The selves exonerated from a regard to the common laws of justice and humanity, in our treatment of beings so fitted to excite every feeling of tenderness and consideration, would be inexplicable, if it were not explained by the general tendency of unlimited power to mislead the understanding and harden the heart. The system of punishment, still persevered in at our great public schools, ought to excite the indignation of all enlightened and christian parents; but at present I shall confine myself to a few hints on the discipline of Charity Schools. Some degree of

only legitimate end of punishment is defined, by some intelligent writers of the present day, to be, the reformation of the offender; and retribution is excluded, and even exemplary punishment, as tending to much evil and injustice. It may confidently be asserted, that punishment, taken as the retribution of moral guilt, can be safely employed only by the supreme Arbiter of the world; and that, when fallible men take upon themselves the right of employing it, as the means of resentment, it is liable to the most terrible abuse, and will equitably be

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Moore on Gambling.

returned upon them as the reward of their own guilt. "Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap." In human hands, it is a mode of avenging our cause, which cannot be distinguished from the doctrine of returning evil for evil; and reason and revelation both join in reprobating this, as distructive of human happiness, and proceeding from a viciousness of heart. -Bicheno on Criminal Jurisprudence, p. 103.

If, then, our only end is reformation, the question of every enlightened and humane person must be, With how little suffering can this child be led to a sense of his fault, and consequent alteration of conduct? I answer, Through the medium of the understanding and the heart; for we must inform the mind and affect the feelings, if we would lead a rational creature from error into the paths of virtue: when we do not attempt this, our labour must be useless, and worse than useless; and we shall prove ourselves insufficient for the task undertaken. The impenitence of the culprit arises either from our ignorance of the human mind, or, as is still oftener the case, our want of temper and christian charity. The heart lies open to kindness, but closes at the appearance of hostility. By the crude efforts of harsh authority, we shall never gain admittance there: we may perhaps constrain outward propriety of conduct, but there will be no real reformation, no attainment of the proper end of punishment.

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Let us not remain so unimbued with the spirit of Christianity, so ignorant of the human mind, and so bent on the infliction of unnecessary pain, as to persevere in a course of harsh and unfeeling discipline, when the word of God, and the most enlightened views of the nature of man, concur in recommending a completely different mode of treatment. The source of all good and evil is in the heart; and there we must apply, if we would eradicate the weeds of vice, and bring into life and beauty those latent seeds of virtue, which may be destined, by the blessing of Heaven on our welldirected exertions, to blossom in a happier and more congenial clime.

EXTRACT FROM A TREATISE ON GAM

BLING, BY THE REV. C. MOORE.

"MAN claims a superiority over the brute creation, by deeming himself a rational creature. But what is the distinguishing reason worth, if it be to submit to the caprice of levity and folly? what are its boasted powers, when it shews itself to be more afraid of offending against a trifling world, than of following its own dictates? what are its advantages, when it shrinks from exertion? what its value, when it makes the madness of mankind a greater object of devotion than the will of God, who bestowed it on man? In short, what is the use of reason, if not to resist and confound the

It would be impracticable, and like-maxims of folly? wise unnecessary, to mention different "Come then to my aid, thou spark modes of treatment adapted to the of ethereal mould, thou image of divariety of mental maladies that offer vine impression, thou god-like Reason! themselves in a large school: only let And when I am surrounded by the gay, the law of love reign in our own heart, the giddy, and the gambling crowds and influence our own conduct, and of fashionable intercourse; when I am the particular mode of correction is encircled by the thronged scenes of comparatively unimportant, when re- tumultuous folly; teach me to diffuse gulated by a benevolent and merciful the full splendour of thy power! Guiddisposition, and constantly accom-ed by thee, may the wiles of depravity panied by an impressive and affectionate appeal to the mind and heart of the child. Explain to him, in familiar language, that punishment is in reality for his benefit, and that you inflict it, not because you are in anger with him, but because you love him too well to allow him to be wicked; and never forget to represent the offence as chiefly against his heavenly Father, and that there he must principally look for mercy and forgiveness.

never allure my guarded heart; nor
the infectious air of dissipation and
wickedness taint and corrupt my con-
versation and manners! Guided by
thee, may the gilded baits of fortune
never lead me astray; nor the fasci-
nations of power pervert the guileless
tenour of my ways! Studious of thee,
may I boldly advance the cause of
TRUTH; undaunted by the gibes and
jeers of licentious levity!
of thee, may I neither fear to be wise,

Studious

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