Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 17.djvu/42

32 a sense in which it is quite true, and it is important to observe what that sense is. Putting aside all questions of immortality, it is not difficult to conclude that mankind possess attributes which do not belong to other creatures, and which make it necessary, in examining the world, to put man in a class by himself.

Take a few examples. Let the first be that of will. The question is whether a human being has a command of his actions in a manner in which no other creature has. Simple experience seems to me to prove that he has: I do not feel that I need the help of philosophers to solve the question. A dog or a horse has in a certain sense a will, but I can calculate how a dog or a horse will act, if I know the conditions to which it is subjected; whereas I positively know from actual experience that I can do as I choose, independently of all external influences. Bring me to the test: tell me in any given circumstances what those circumstances will lead me to do, and I will undertake to do something different. And the power of will implies the capacity for self-sacrifice. Every animal is by its very nature selfish. Doubtless there are, in this as in other things, faint reflections of humanity in the humbler creatures, just as the στοργὴ of the animal, which lasts for a short time and utterly dies out when it has served its purpose, is the faint reflection of that human love which lasts through life and grows with years; but there is nothing in the life of animals which can be seriously named as being of the same kind as that feeling which inspired a Howard, or a Wilberforce, or a St. Vincent de Paul. The man who deliberately puts aside that which is most pleasant to men in general, and which he himself has every capacity to enjoy, and does something quite different from the dictates of his nature because he judges that something to be right or good, exhibits a quality and a power which is simply lacking in every other living creature except the human race.

Again, regard man as a being of purpose. I quoted a passage not long ago from Ernst Haeckel, in which he denies the existence of purpose in nature. Can purpose be denied to exist in man? If I am not mistaken, the whole history of civilization may be described as a development of purpose. Every other creature is apparently content with the condition in which it finds itself. Birds build nests as their ancestors did thousands of years ago; fishes have no ambition; possibly the time may have been when ants did not know the luxury of keeping aphis-cows, or being waited upon by slaves of their own race; but, speaking generally, it may be said that unprogressiveness marks all other animals, as distinctly as progressiveness does man. I put out of consideration, as not belonging to the argument, the question of evolution, and the progression of living things in that sense of the word. I am speaking only of nature as we see it now, and not as it may possibly once have been; and certainly, as things are now, it seems impossible to deny that while the animals about us are as fixed