Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 45.djvu/661

Rh has to consider is not whether the doctrine is impious, but whether it is true. No scientific opinion has ever been advanced that has not seemed impious to some minds, and been denounced and persecuted as such by ecclesiastical authorities.

Bishop Butler, on the contrary, in his work on The Analogy of Religion, Natural and Revealed, to the Constitution and Course of Nature, declares that "we can not find anything throughout the whole analogy of Nature to afford us even the slightest presumption that animals ever lose their living powers." He admits that his argument in support of the doctrine of a future life proves the immortality of brutes as well as that of man, and thus recognizes their spiritual kinship.

An eminent Scotch physician and anatomist, Dr. John Barclay, in his Inquiry into the Opinions, Ancient and Modern, concerning Life and Organization (1825), urges the probable immortality of the lower animals, which, he thinks, are "reserved, as forming many of the accustomed links in the chain of being, and by preserving the chain entire, contribute in the future state, as they do here, to the general beauty and variety of the universe, a source not only of sublime but of perpetual delight." The author seems to infer the continued existence of the brute creation from the fact that it forms an essential part of universal being, and that its total disappearance would mar the perfection of the next world, which should be more perfect than this world. He assumes, however, that the lower animals are endowed with immortality, not so much from psychological necessity or for their own sake as sentient and intelligent creatures, as for man's sake, in order that their presence may minister to his pleasure by forming an attractive feature in the heavenly landscape. It is, therefore, solely from anthropocentric considerations that they are granted this lease of eternal life; just as "the poor Indian" is represented by the poet as looking forward to the possession of happy hunting fields after death, where he may follow with keener enjoyment his favorite pursuit, and "his faithful dog shall bear him company."

More than fifty years ago Henry Hallam made the following observations, which are remarkable as an anticipation of the ethical corollary to the doctrine of evolution: "Few at present, who believe in the immortality of the human soul, would deny the same to the elephant; but it must be owned that the discoveries of zoölogy have pushed this to consequences which some might not readily adopt. The spiritual being of a sponge revolts a little our prejudices; yet there is no resting place, and we must admit this or be content to sink ourselves into a mass of medullary fiber. Brutes have been as slowly emancipated in philosophy as some classes of mankind have been in civil polity; their