We, as human beings, do differently.  Our wills decide for us; not the bestial aim, nor the instinct.  I walk, I speak, I feel in me a certain force, an intelligent principle which all my bodily mechanism obeys.  This force is distinct from anything connected with my body.  It is indeed more easily conceived than is the body itself, and of all our movements it is the supreme controller.  But how does the body conceive and understand this intelligent force?  That is the point!  I see the tool obeying the hand; but what guides the hand?  Who guides the planets in their rapid courses?  It may be some angel guide controls the whirling planets; and in like manner some spirit dwells in us and controls all our machinery.  The impulse is given—­the impression made—­but how, I do not know!  We shall only learn it in the bosom of God; and to speak frankly, Descartes himself was no wiser.  On that point we all are equals.  All that I know is that this intelligent controlling spirit does not exist in the lower animals.  Man alone is its temple.

Nevertheless, we must allow to the beasts a higher plane than that of plants, notwithstanding the fact that plants breathe.

Is there any explanation to what I shall now relate?  Two rats who were seeking their living had the good fortune to find an egg.  Such a dinner was amply sufficient for folks of their species, they had no need to look for an ox.  With keen delight and an appetite to match they were just about to eat up the egg between them, when an unbidden guest appeared in the shape of Master Reynard the fox.  This was a most awkward and vexatious visitation.  How was the egg to be saved from the jaws of him?  To wrap it up carefully and carry it away by the fore paws, or to roll it, or to drag it, were methods as impossible as they were hazardous.  But Necessity, that ingenious mother, furnished the never-failing invention.  The sponger being as yet far enough away to give the rats time to reach their home, one of them lay upon his back and took the egg safely between his arms whilst the other, in spite of sundry shocks and a few slips, dragged him home by the tail.

After this recital, let any one who dare maintain that animals have no powers of reason.

For my part if I had the portioning of these faculties I would allow as much reasoning power in animals as in infants, who evidently think from their earliest years, from which fact we may conclude that one can think without knowing oneself.  I would, similarly, grant the animals a reason, not such as we possess, but far above a blind instinct.  I would refine a speck of matter, a tiny atom—­extract of light—­something more vivid and lively than fire; for since wood can turn to flame, cannot flame, being further purified, teach us something of the rarity of the soul?  And is not gold extracted from lead?  My creatures should be capable of feeling and judgment; but nothing more.  There should be no argument from apes.