Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 12.djvu/525

 512 H. MAUDSLEY I formed for its particular functions and without superfluous nervous structure to undergo further formation a formed, not a forming structure. The skill of the spider and the skill of the juggler have both been acquired in the course of the ages both represent capitalised experience ; but the skill of the spider involves and uses its entire nervous system, which is framed and set to certain ends, the accom- plishment of them being its life of relation, while the skill of the juggler involves only a few tracts of a very complex nervous system, the accomplishment of their function being but a small and incidental event of his life of relation. The one therefore is capable of reflection, the other not ; the one capable of progress in feats of dexterity, the other not. Reflect on the multitude of varied and admirable instincts displayed by the different living creatures, small and great, in the world, and especially on the remarkably elaborate instincts of the different tribes of insects ; and thereupon conceive them all brought together in one animal by collec- tion and concentration of their different nervous systems within the compass of a single brain ; would not that composite brain collectively embody a larger and more varied mass of essential reason than a human brain ? the uncon- scious intelligence of it surpass the conscious intelligence ? Men have learnt much from animals in the past, but that which they have learnt may be little compared with that which they are destined to learn when they obtain better understanding of the natures and operations of these varied and ingenious embodiments of implicit reason. Certain it is that we find distributed among animals all those qualities which, when we meet with them collectively in man, we attribute to mind memory, attention, appre- hension ; foresight of ends, ingenuity in means and perse- verance in the use of them ; courage, anger, distress, envy, revenge, love of kind and parental attachment reaching even to the sacrifice of life ; there is not a single mental quality which man possesses, even to his moral feeling, that we do not find the germ or more or less full display of in one or other class of animals. Nor is there the least reason to suppose that they depend on different causes in him and in them ; what is a sufficient cause in them is a sufficient cause in him ; what nervous structure can do of itself in the one it can do in the other : if animals are, as Descartes thought, machines, it is certain the corresponding machinery in man may do most of his mental work. The admiring surprise which is eternally being expressed anew at the ingenuities of instinct and on the occasions of manifestation of conscious