effect is a bodily and purely animal one-not using animal in a depreciating sense, if moderately indulged; but if immoderately, then with the worst meaning we can convey. And it is by the excessive indulgence of these two senses that man sinks himself lower than those animals whose nature he libels by comparing them with himself.

Let not the sensual voluptuaries-the slaves of touch and of taste-flatter themselves that refinement, as they call it, or the art of varying and exciting the pleasures of a jaded sense, mitigates in any way the inevitable degradation of themselves, or alters the low, because soulless, character of their delights. Between the gourmand and the gourmet impartial Justice and sharp-eyed Truth see no distinction of nature, only a difference of degree. Insects and reptiles are insects and reptiles still, though some are black, slow, and ugly; others bright, quick, and graceful; though some may be offensive to smell and sight, and others even pleasing in their nature, they still are the same-the same in their instincts and their pleasures the same in the actual scale of life. The most fastidious voluptuary in his amours, and the most tasteful epicure in food, are only refined specimens of a class: to their classes do they still belong, though they may express disgust at the gross pleasures of the vulgar-the common street-walker, and the glutton. We appreciate the change, and admit it is for the better; but it is not a change of state, only one of degree; slaves they are still, like the other slaves of touch and taste, to their most purely bodily senses.

Now we would say a few words respecting two vices, which are generally coupled together, and regarded as the most animal of all. We mean lust and intemperance. We consider, then, that a decided distinction should be made between sexual vice and lust-between gluttony and intemperance-although they are generally classed to

gether.

The word lust has become entirely misused in our language, and is generally meant to convey a meaning quite opposed to its original and true one, which implies merely "pleasure." A German "lust Haus" is a very different place to what our literal interpretation would render it. "Lustig," both in German and Dutch, means

merely jovial, and our own word lusty, thence derived, has nothing in common with the distorted meaning of our word lust, or with "lustful." Nor can we regard lust, in its true sense, as a vice at all; it is a feeling implanted in man by the Creator for a very important and natural purpose; a feeling common to all humanity, and only vicious when inordinate, irregular, or exercised with no useful aim. It is a feeling to be regulated, not to be destroyed; and those fight against the law of their very being who seek to do so. "Shut the door on nature, and she will out at the window," is an old and true saying, which the priests of the Roman Catholic church would do better to study than any amount of saintly miracles and Theresaic lives. Although sexual desire is a propensity man has in common with other animals, it is still so far spiritual also, as that, if man wishes-and the wish is natural to all—to propagate spiritual beings like himself, he has this particular way presented to him of attaining his desire. But he need not be ashamed of sharing the desire with other animals, any more than he need be ashamed of the necessity for eating and drinking, which is also common to them as to him; and the result, moreover, of love for his offspring, which ensues from the indulgence of sexual desire, is also common to animals, who are, so far, also spiritual in their nature; yet parents are not ashamed of loving their young more than life itself because most animals do the same. There is nothing, we contend, inherently wrong or evil in lust; only when unnaturally indulged in, or to excess, or in a manner foreign to its purpose, and when used out of its proper order, does it deserve the name of vice; and when so inordinately or unnaturally indulged, it should be regarded not so much as a bodily as a spiritual vice. It may injure the bodily organisation, it is true, and corrupt and weaken man's natural power and vigour, and so far it is a bodily vice; but further than that, we contend that it is a spiritual vice, and is the proof of selfish love, of love perverted and depraved, and should at this point be taken out of the category of animal or sensual vices, and be regarded more seriously, as belonging to the vices of the soul. In respect to gluttony, some animals do certainly eat to such. repletion as to be unable to move, but they have good

reason for so doing, may be; when the supply of food is precarious they have the sense, like Dugald Dalgetty, to lay in good store of "provant" for future wants. Gluttony with men we cannot imagine to be anything but a purely animal vice; it is, however, by no means a common one, and is met with principally amongst those people also whose supply of food is uncertain, or who are of a mere animal nature.

Intemperance is still less the vice of animals; nor is it even the vice of men generally as human beings in a natural state of existence. Animals themselves are temperate in their drink, and do not naturally affect alcohol. Love of intoxicating liquors is certainly much more a spiritual than a bodily vice. We admit that with some constitutions stimulating drinks are naturally, or may become, a necessity almost of existence; but this is an exceptional misfortune. Such persons are to be pitied rather than condemned, and need the physician rather than the preacher. But, in most cases, the desire of intoxicating drinks arises from a spiritual craving, and the excessive indulgence in them is a spiritual vice. It is the vice especially of the weak and wicked, of suffering and undisciplined souls. The sad heart, as it is termed, needs consolation-the troubled soul, repose; conscience would be deadened; memory would be numbed; the imagination would be excited, the mind stimulated; poverty would forget its privations; vice seeks boldness, and crime oblivion. But all in vain! the aids they employ to their respective ends are not good spirits, but deceitful fiends, who do "palter with us in a double sense, and keep the word of promise to the ear, but break it to the hope.

Let no one think that we could soften down or palliate these vices we only wish to place them in a proper light. We desire to hear all things called by their right names. Do not bring in poor, guiltless animals to give a title to vices more or less purely human. Human vices, rather than animal, are those which, up to a certain point, are hurtful only to man's animal organisation, and are injurious to the health of his body alone, but beyond that, are full of danger to his immortal soul, and do degrade and vitiate it to an extent which those who first gave way

to their importunities would have shrunk back from in terror and in horror, could they but have conceived or have foreseen the miserable, the damnable result, of such indulgence. If "moderation is the silver string running through the pearl chain of all virtues," as Thomas Fuller expresses it, it is peculiarly so with the carnal appetites and affections of man; of which it may be said, on the other hand, that excess, or intemperate indulgence, forms the iron chain which fetters the soul in bondage to vice, and keeps it in misery and servitude to evil, ending in despair and death.

ANIMAL ORGANISATION.

So much has been written concerning the question as to whether other animals besides man have souls-so much unnecessary confusion and misapprehension appear to have arisen on the subject—that we think it not amiss to express our doctrine thereon, and to state at once, that, although we hold some of the higher forms of animal life may be reasonably supposed capable of immortality, yet, that the great mass of animated creatures are nothing more than material animal organisms endowed with animal vital power, in contradistinction to the spiritual vis vitæ ; and that they have, most clearly, no souls, in the sense of soul as we have explained it throughout this work; though each class of animals may be endued with one or more special and particular organ or organs of the soul; which, nevertheless, is not put in motion by any will of its own, free or otherwise, or is directed by any love beyond that of self-self-preservation and selfpropagation; and in every way, at all times, and in all cases, acts by instinct,* from impulse, or by a directing power, which has nothing in common with human reason, but which invariably, and among thousands, as with one creature in the young and inexperienced as with the adult-acts in the same way, and regards the same results.

After all that has been said and written regarding the reason and reasoning of animals-their brains and their external form, in some cases so nearly approaching a

* We use the word "instinct" to designate all other kinds of intelligence than the human.

rough type of man; their feelings, their intelligence; their affection, fidelity, and courage; their powers of imitation, organisation, and construction; their forethought and love of order and cleanliness-we still can come but to one conclusion; which is, that all such faculties and qualities are the result of a power working in and on them as instruments-a power which is more quick and sure than any man is endowed with-an infallible and invariable instinct, as it is termed, which comes to them direct from the Creator, and which cannot be identified with any immortal soul dwelling in their bodies, but forms a power essentially separate and distinct from that of spiritual human life. No one could be more eloquent in favour of animals, or more apt to underrate man, than Montaigne. Nowhere, we think, could so much be said, and so well-so much curious learning, and such ingenious reasoning, be brought to bear in depreciation of man and exaltation of the animal kingdom-as in his apology for Raimond de Sebonde's "Theologia naturalis; sive liber creaturarum." But it seems to us that the great fact of the essential difference between man and any other animal still remains untouched; that, besides the patent superiority of the former in point of capacity for improvement and progress, the one is endowed with two qualities which alone are enough to point him out as an immortal being-viz., a will to love his Creator, and a power to shape that love into words and deeds, not to be disdained even by the angels themselves, and which place him so high in the scale of spiritual life as to make any equality between him and other animals out of the question. Whether man, as regards his animal organisation, is merely a development of a lower form of animal life, is quite beside the question. Let it be admitted that it may be so; for that it is so can never clearly be proved, so as to be past the power of denial or refutation. But let it be so granted-and that does not in the least affect the position of man's present undeniable superiority, however humble his beginnings may have been; and, indeed, goes further than anything to prove his spiritual nature, which alone is found capable of that improvement and progress which characterises man amongst all other creatures on earth; whilst the rest of the animal creation,