Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos, missing text or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1857. Not illustrated. Excerpt: ... Section 1. Man, In A Certain Sphere, .acts As The Animal.--We never find man excluded wholly from his rational being, and thus acting solely as a brute. In his most sensual activity, there is that which evinces the posession of higher faculties, and this higher prerogative always modifies the mere life of the animal. But the whole animal activity is still so distinct in its nature and end from the spiritual being of man, that it is competent to us to abstract the modifying influence of the rational, and regard man as solely animal agent. We may find him, in most particulars, above other animals in the perfection and strength of his faculties, and in all combined, that he is the most complete of the entire animal creation; but no augmentation of degree will at all take him out of the sphere of mere brute existence. He is still the fellow to the creatures of the stall and the stye. In the intellectual capacity, as animal, there is the full provision given for attaining all the phenomena that belong to the sensible world. All the qualities which are perceived through any organ of sense, and all the mental phenomena, as the exercises of the mind itself, which may in any way come within consciousness, are wholly within the reach of the human mind. Some animals may have a quicker and keener sense than man, and some peculiar instincts are given to some of even the lower animals, but in general it may be said, that all the activity which belongs to animal perception is in its most complete degree the possession of man. And far more perfectly than any other animal can man exercise the connecting operations of the understanding. The experience of the man, in bringing the changing pheno mena of the sense within the concluded judgments of the understanding, must be far more ..
