two extremes; on the one the theory of Descartes which reduced animals to mere machines, on the other what Mr. Alger defines as 'the faith that animals have immaterial and deathless souls.' Among modern speculations may be instanced that of Wesley, who thought that in the next life animals will be raised even above their bodily and mental state at the creation, 'the horridness of their appearance will be exchanged for their primæval beauty,' and it even may be that they will be made what men are now, creatures capable of religion. Adam Clarke's argument for the future life of animals rests on abstract justice: whereas they did not sin, but yet are involved in the sufferings of sinful man, and cannot have in the present state the happiness designed for them, it is reasonable that they must have it in another.[1] Although, however, the primitive belief in the souls of animals still survives to some extent in serious philosophy, it is obvious that the tendency of educated opinion on the question whether brutes have soul, as distinguished from life and mind, has for ages been in a negative and sceptical direction. The doctrine has fallen from its once high estate. It belonged originally to real, though rude science. It has now sunk to become a favourite topic in that mild speculative talk which still does duty so largely as intellectual conversation, and even then its propounders defend it with a lurking consciousness of its being after all a piece of sentimental nonsense.
Animals being thus considered in the primitive psychology to have souls like human beings, it follows as the simplest matter of course that tribes who kill wives and slaves, to dispatch their souls on errands of duty with
- ↑ Alger, 'Future Life,' p. 632, and see 'Bibliography,' appendix ii.; Wesley, 'Sermon on Rom. viii. 19-22;' Adam Clarke, 'Commentary,' on same text. This, by the way, is the converse view to Bellarmine's, who so patiently let the fleas bite him, saying, 'We shall have heaven to reward us for our sufferings, but these poor creatures have nothing but the enjoyment of the present life.' — Bayle, 'Biog. Dic.' The argument in Butler's 'Analogy,' part i. ch. i. puts the evidence for souls of brutes on much the same footing as that for souls of men.
