Lanterna Rally

Author: Asa Mahan

Publisher: Theclassics.Us

Published: 2013-09

Total Pages: 114

ISBN-13: 9781230338071

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1847 edition. Excerpt: ... chapter xix. the intelligence of man, as distinguished from that of the brute. It has been very common with philosophers to represent all created existences, from the highest Intelligences in heaven to the crude forms of matter, as successive links in one great chain, each link in the chain, commencing with the lowest, differing mainly in degree from that which immediately succeeds it. The highest forms of brute, and the lowest of rational Intelligence, for example, differ, it is asserted, not in kind, but only in degree. Of late, the reality of orders of existences, as successive links of a great chain, has come to be seriously doubted. The intelligence of man and the brute, it is said, differs not in degree, but in kind. If we conceive of the highest forms of brute intelligence increased to any degree whatever, as far as degree is concerned, still it makes no approach at all to real rationality. The different orders of brute instincts do constitute, it is thought, different links of one chain. Those of rational Intelligences constitute another and totally different chain, a chain none of the links of which are connected, in any form, with any of those of the other. This last is the opinion entertained by the author of this Treatise. I will now proceed to state the grounds of this opinion. I will introduce what I have to say upon this subject by two extracts, somewhat lengthy, from Coleridge. In the first, we have a classification of the different forms of brute Instinct; in the second, we are presented with two instances of Instinctive Intelligence, in their highest manifestations. Brute Instincts classified. I " It is evident that