Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 3 "Philosophical Remains" (1883 ed.).djvu/47

Rh own? But what sort of an answer, what sort of an inference, is this? Is it more intelligible that the reason of any being should be its own absolutely, when manifested in a high degree, than when manifested in a low degree? or is the converse not much the more intelligible proposition? If one man has a hundred thousand pounds in his coffers, and another a hundred pence, would you conclude that the former sum was the man's own, because it was so large, and that the latter sum was not the man's own, because it was so small; or would you not be disposed to draw the very opposite conclusion? Besides, the question is not one of degree at all. We ask, Why is the reason of man said to belong to him absolutely as his own, and why is the reason put forth by animals not said to belong to them in the least?

As it is vain, then, to attempt to answer this question by attending to the manifestations of reason itself, as displayed either in man or in the other objects of the universe, we must leave the fact of reason altogether, it being a property possessed in common, both by him and by them, and one which carries in it intrinsically no evidence to proclaim the very different tenures by which it is held in the one case and in the other; and we must look out for some other fact which is the peculiar possession of man; some fact which may be shown to fall in with his reason, and give it a different turn from the course which it takes in its progress through the