for an unpretending savant—who perhaps did not pride himself on his philosophy—to put an end to the interminable controversy by a simple distinction; but one of those luminous distinctions which are worth more than systems. Frederic Cuvier separated instinct from intelligence.
But, as yet, no one has proposed this question:—
Is the difference between man’s moral sense and that of the brute a difference in kind or only in degree?
If, hitherto, any one had dared to maintain the latter alternative, his arguments would have seemed scandalous, blasphemous, and offensive to morality and religion. The ecclesiastical and secular tribunals would have condemned him with one voice. And, mark the style in which they would have branded the immoral paradox! “Conscience,”—they would have cried,—“conscience, man’s chief glory, was given to him exclusively; the notion of justice and injustice, of merit and demerit, is his noble privilege; to man, alone,—the lord of creation,—belongs the sublime power to resist his worldly propensities, to choose between good and evil, and to bring himself more and more into the resemblance of God through liberty and justice.… No; the holy image of virtue was never graven save on the heart of man.” Words full of feeling, but void of sense.
Man is a rational and social animal—ζωον λογικον και πολιτικον—said Aristotle. This definition is worth more than all which have been given since. I do not except even M. de Bonald's celebrated definition,—man is an intellect served by organs,—a definition which has the double fault of explaining the known by the unknown; that is, the living being by the intellect; and of neglecting man’s essential quality,—animality.
Man, then, is an animal living in society. Society means
