the mode of conducting it, are only the result of such circumstances as can be turned to account by creatures no higher in the scale of being than insects.

We make very disingenuous use of the lower animals, in our reasonings and analogies. If we wish to degrade a man, we say he acts like a brute;-if, on the other hand, we would vindicate any part of our conduct as especially natural and proper, we say the very brutes do it. Now, in one sense of the word, everything is natural which takes place within the whole circle of nature; and being animals ourselves, we partake of much that is common to all animals. But if we are to pique ourselves on our superiority, it is evident that we are superior in proportion as we are rationally and deliberately different from the animals beneath us; while they, on the other hand, have a right to share our "glory," or to pull it down, according to the degrees in which they resemble us.

The conclusion is, that we ought attentively to consider in what points the resemblance is to be found, and in what we leave them manifestly behind. Creatures, who differ from ourselves, may, it is true, have perceptions of which we are incapable, perhaps nobler ones; but this is a mere assumption: we can only reason from what we know; and it is to be presumed, that they are as inferior to us in all which we reckon intellectual and capable of advancement, as they are known to be so in general by their subjection to our uses, by the helps which we can afford them, by the mistakes they make, the points at which they stop short, and the manner in which we can put to flight their faculties, and whole myriads of them.

What faculties then have beasts and insects in common with us? What can they do, that we do also?-Let us see. Beavers can build houses, and insects of various sorts can build cells. Birds also construct themselves dwelling-places suitable to their nature. The orang-outang can be taught to put on clothes; he can sit up and take his wine at dinner; and the squirrel can play his part in a dessert, as far as the cracking of nuts. Animals, in general, love personal cleanliness, and eat no more than is fit for them, but can

be encouraged into great sensuality. Bees have a monarchical government: foxes understand trick and stratagem; so do hundreds of other animals, from the dog down to the dunghill-beetle; many are capable of pride and emulation, more of attachment, and all of fear, of anger, of hostility, or other impulses for self-defence; and all perhaps are susceptible of improvement from without; that is to say, by the help of man. Seals will look on while their young ones fight, and pat and caress the conqueror; and now it is discovered that ants can conduct armies to battle, can make and rescue prisoners, and turn them to account. Huber, in addition to these discoveries, found out that they possessed a sort of cattle in a species of aphides, and that they made them yield a secretion for food as we obtain milk from the cows. It appears to be almost equally proved, that animals have modes of communicating with one another, analogous to speech. Insects are supposed to interchange a kind of dumb language,-to talk, as it were, with fingers,-by means of their antennæ; and it is difficult to believe, that in the songs of birds there is not both speech and inflection, communications in the gross, and expressions modified by the occasion.

Let the reader, however, as becomes his philosophy, take from all this whatever is superfluous or conjectural, and enough will remain to shew that the least and lowest animals, as well as man, can furnish themselves with dwellings; can procure food; can trick and deceive; are naturally clean and temperate, but can be taught to indulge their senses; have the ordinary round of passions; encourage the qualities necessary to vigour and self-defence; have polity and kingly government; can make other animals of use to them; and finally, can make war, and conduct armies to battle in the most striking modes of human strategy.

Animals in general therefore include among themselves

Masons, or house-builders;

Getters of bread;

Common followers of the senses;

Common-place imitators;

Pursuers of their own interest, in cunning as well as in

simplicity;

Possessors of the natural affections;

Encouragers of valour and self-exertion ;

Monarchs and subjects;

Warriors, and leaders to battle.

Whatever, among men, is reducible to any of these classes, is to be found among beasts, birds, and insects. We are not to be ashamed of anything we have in common with them, merely because we so have it. On the contrary, we are to be glad that any quality useful or noble is so universal in the creation. But whatever we discern among them, of sordid or purely selfish, there, without condemning them, we may see the line drawn, beyond which we can alone congratulate ourselves on our humanity; and whatever skill they possess in common with us, there we are to begin to doubt whether we have any reason to pique ourselves on our display of it, and from that limit we are to begin to consider what they do not possess.

We have often had a suspicion, that military talent is greatly overrated by the world, and for an obvious reason; because the means by which it shews itself are connected with brute force and the most terrible results; and men's faculties are dazzled and beaten down by a thunder and lightning so formidable to their very existence. If playing a game at chess involved the blowing up of gun-powder, and the hazard of laying waste a city, men would have the same grand idea of a game of chess; and yet we now give it no more glory than it deserves. Now it is doubtful, whether the greatest military conqueror, considered purely as such, and not with reference to his accidental possession of other talents, such as those of Cæsar and Xenophon, is not a mere chess-player of this description, with the addition of greater self-possession. His main faculty is of the geometrical or proportion-giving order; of which it is remarkable, that it is the only one, ranking high among those of humanity, which is partaken by the lowest ignorance and what is called

pure instinct; by arithmetical idiots, and architectural bees. Idiots have been known to solve difficult arithmetical questions, by taking a thought which they could do for no other purpose; that is to say, by reference to some undiscovered faculty within them, that looks very like an instinct, and the result of the presence or absence of something, which is not common to higher organization. In Jameson's Philosophical Journal for April, is a conjecture, that the hexagonal plan of the cells of a hornet is derived from the structure of its fore-legs. It has often struck us, that the architecture of the cells of bees might be owing to a similar guidance of conformation; and by the like analogy, extraordinary powers of arithmetic might be traceable to some physical peculiarity, or a tendency to it; such as the indication of a sixth finger on the hands of one of the calculating boys, that were lately so much talked of. We have sometimes thought, that even the illustrious Newton had a face and a set of features, singularly accordant with mathematical uniformity and precision. And there is a professional cast of countenance attributed, not perhaps without reason, to warriors of the more mechanical order. Washington's face was as cut and dry as a diagram.

It may be argued, that whatever proofs may exist of the acquaintance of insects with the art of war, or at least with their power of joining battle under the ordinary appearances of skill and science, it does not follow that they conduct the matter with the real science of human beings, or that they are acquainted with our variety of tactics, or have made improvements in them from time to time. We concede, that in all probability there is a distinction between the exercise of the most rational-looking instincts on the part of a lower animal, and that of the most instinctive

* See the Magazine of Natural History for July, a work lately set up. We beg leave to recommend this, and all similar works, to the lovers of truth and enquiry in general; physical discovery having greater alliance with moral, than is suspected; and the habit of sincere investigation on all points being greatly encouraged by its existence on any one.

looking reason on the side of man; but where the two classes have so much in common in any oné particular, what we mean to shew is, that in that particular it is more difficult than in others to pronounce where the limit between conscious and unconscious skill is to be drawn; and that so far, we have no pretension which other animals may not dispute with us. It has been often wondered, that a great general is not in other respects a man above the vulgar; that he is not a better speaker than others, a better writer, or thinker, or possessed of greater address; in short, that he has no qualities but such as are essential to him in his military capacity. This again looks like a proof of the mechanical nature of a general's ability. We believe it may be said exclusively of military talents, and of one or two others connected with the. mathematics, that they are the only ones capable of attaining to greatness and celebrity in their respective departments, with a destitution of taste or knowledge in every other. Every other great talent partakes more or less of a sympathy with greatness in other shapes. The fine arts have their harmonies in common: wit implies a stock of ideas: the legislator (we do not mean the ordinary conductors of government, for they, as one of them said, require much less wisdom than the world supposes; and it may be added, impose upon the world somewhat in the same manner as military leaders, by dint of the size and potency of their operations)—the legislator makes a profound study of all the wants of mankind; and poetry and philosophy shew the height at which they live, by "looking abroad into universality."

Far be it from us to undervalue the use of any science, especially in the hands of those who are capable of so looking abroad, and seeing where it can advance the good of the community. The commonest genuine soldier has a merit in his way, which we are far from disesteeming. Without a portion of his fortitude, no man has the power to be useful. But we are speaking of intellects capable of leading society onwards, and not of instruments however respectable and unfortunately (generally speaking) the greatest soldiers are fit only to be instruments, not leaders. Once