The lower animals are not endowed with moral freedom.  Probably this is not because they show no trace of the better consciousness which in us is manifested as morality, or nothing analogous to it; for, if that were so, the lower animals, which are in so many respects like ourselves in outward appearance that we regard man as a species of animal, would possess some raison d’etre entirely different from our own, and actually be, in their essential and inmost nature, something quite other than ourselves.  This is a contention which is obviously refuted by the thoroughly malignant and inherently vicious character of certain animals, such as the crocodile, the hyaena, the scorpion, the snake, and the gentle, affectionate and contented character of others, such as the dog.  Here, as in the case of men, the character, as it is manifested, must rest upon something that is above and beyond time.  For, as Jacob Boehme says,[1] there is a power in every animal which is indestructible, and the spirit of the world draws it into itself, against the final separation at the Last Judgment.  Therefore we cannot call the lower animals free, and the reason why we cannot do so is that they are wanting in a faculty which is profoundly subordinate to the better consciousness in its highest phase, I mean reason.  Reason is the faculty of supreme comprehension, the idea of totality.  How reason manifests itself in the theoretical sphere Kant has shown, and it does the same in the practical:  it makes us capable of observing and surveying the whole of our life, thought, and action, in continual connection, and therefore of acting according to general maxims, whether those maxims originate in the understanding as prudential rules, or in the better consciousness as moral laws.

[Footnote 1:  Epistles, 56.]

If any desire or passion is aroused in us, we, and in the same way the lower animals, are for the moment filled with this desire; we are all anger, all lust, all fear; and in such moments neither the better consciousness can speak, nor the understanding consider the consequences.  But in our case reason allows us even at that moment to see our actions and our life as an unbroken chain,—­a chain which connects our earlier resolutions, or, it may be, the future consequences of our action, with the moment of passion which now fills our whole consciousness.  It shows us the identity of our person, even when that person is exposed to influences of the most varied kind, and thereby we are enabled to act according to maxims.  The lower animal is wanting in this faculty; the passion which seizes it completely dominates it, and can be checked only by another passion—­anger, for instance, or lust, by fear; even though the vision that terrifies does not appeal to the senses, but is present in the animal only as a dim memory and imagination.  Men, therefore, may be called irrational, if, like the lower animals, they allow themselves to be determined by the moment.