We
have already quoted Hamilton to this effect, and we, moreover, have his
authority for saying that the faculty of discovering truth, by a
comparison of the notions we have obtained by observation and
experience, is the attribute by which man is distinguished as a
creature higher than the animals. We might also cite Leibnitz to the
effect that men differ from animals in being capable of the formation
of necessary judgments, and hence capable of demonstrative sciences.
But notwithstanding it seems so apparent that what is customarily
called reason is the distinguishing endowment which makes man the
"paragon of animals," we very often meet with attempts to set up some
other distinction. We cannot here go into an examination of these
various theories, or even allude to them specially. We will, however,
briefly refer to a view which was recently advanced in one of our
leading periodicals, inasmuch as it makes prominent a distinction which
we wish to notice, although it seems to us to be only subordinate to
the distinguishing attribute of the human mind which we have already
pointed out. It is said that self-consciousness is what makes the great
difference between man and other animals; that the latter do not
separate themselves consciously from the world in which they exist; and
that, though they have emotions, impulses, pains, and pleasures, every
change of feeling in them takes at once the form of an outward change
either in place or position.
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