Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 17.djvu/43

Rh in their habits and instincts as the plants, or nearly so, there is one race, namely, the human, which is not fixed at all, but is constantly devising something new, regarding nothing as gained while anything remains to be achieved.

Once more, take the more general attribute of thought. Much has been written of late concerning the minds of animals; it is a curious and interesting subject, and certainly I for one do not grudge our humbler friends in the great world-family of life any gift of mind with which they have been endowed. The brain of the ant is, as some one has truly said, perhaps the most wonderful little morsel of matter in existence. But certainly the mind of man is so incomparably more powerful and effective a machine of thought, that any comparison between it and the mind of the most gifted animal appears almost ridiculous. The fact is that our natural tendency is so much to assume the utter non-existence of mind in animals, that, when we find evidence of mind which we can not resist, we stand amazed at the discovery. In many things, as we know, the inferior creatures are much more clever than ourselves; we could never build a nest like a bird, or make a comb like a bee, or do ten thousand things which are being done every day by spiders and beetles. But still thought in the highest sense belongs to man. A dog sometimes looks as though he was thinking a thing out, and dog-stories are very wonderful; but, after all, the cleverest dog that ever lived yet has never been able to get beyond "Bow-wow," and we may safely predict that no dog will ever acquire even the simplest elements of human knowledge. I can not believe that this power of thought can properly be described as the mere result of phosphorus in the brain. That epigram, "No phosphorus, no thought" strikes me as having in it more of smartness than of wisdom. It is of course true that the brain is in some manner the organ of thought, and phosphorus may be the most important element in the formation of the brain; but is not thought conceivable independently of this particular machinery for making it possible to a material creature, just as motion is conceivable apart from horses or steam, or any of the causes to which it is commonly due? Is there not a kind of absurdity in regarding thought as the result of phosphorus, as real as if we should say, what upon the same principle of philosophy we might say, that truthfulness, kindness, modesty, were all functions of phosphorus? Nay, I do not know why we should not go further, and assert that there could be no thought without carbon or without any other element of which the human body is composed; for you can have no actual thought without a living creature, and no living creature without a body, and no body without carbon, ∴ etc.—