Section XVII of essays on “Classification,” complete.

THE RELATIONS in which individuals of the same species of animals stand to one another are not less determined and fixed than the relations of species to the surrounding elements, which we have thus far considered. The relations which individual animals bear to one another are of such a character, that they ought long ago to have been considered as proof sufficient that no organized being could ever have been called into existence by another agency than the direct intervention of a reflective mind. It is in a measure conceivable that physical agents might produce something like the body of the lowest kinds of animals or plants, and that under identical circumstances the same thing may have been produced again and again, by the repetition of the same process; but that upon closer analysis of the possibilities of the case, it should not have at once appeared how incongruous the further supposition is, that such agencies could delegate the power of reproducing what they had just called into existence, to those very beings, with such limitations that they could never reproduce anything but themselves, I am at a loss to understand. It will no more do to suppose that from simpler structures such a process may end in the production of the most perfect, as every step implies an addition of possibilities not even included in the original case. Such a delegation of power can only be an act of intelligence; while between the production of an indefinite number of organized beings, as the result of a physical law, and the reproduction of these same organized beings by themselves, there is no necessary connection. The successive generations of any animal or plant cannot stand, as far as their origin is concerned, in any causal relation to physical agents, if these agents have not the power of delegating their own action to the full extent to which they have already been productive in the first appearance of these beings; for it is a physical law that the resultant is equal to the forces applied. If any new being has ever been produced by such agencies, how could the successive generations enter, at the time of their birth, into the same relations to these agents, as their ancestors, if these beings had not in themselves the faculty of sustaining their character, in spite of these agents? Why, again, should animals and plants at once begin to decompose under the very influence of all those agents which have been subservient to the maintenance of their life, as soon as life ceases, if life is limited or determined by them?

  There exist between individuals of the same species relations far more complicated than those already alluded to, which go still further to disprove any possibility of causal dependence of organized beings upon physical agents. The relations upon which the maintenance of species is based, throughout the animal kingdom, in the universal antagonism of sex, and the infinite diversity of these connections in different types, have really nothing to do with external conditions of existence; they indicate only relations of individuals to individuals, beyond their connections with the material world in which they live. How, then, could these relations be the result of physical causes, when physical agents are known to have a specific sphere of action, in no way bearing upon this sphere of phenomena?

  For the most part, the relations of individuals to individuals are unquestionably of an organic nature, and, as such, have to be viewed in the same light as any other structural feature; but there is much, also, in these connections that partakes of a psychological character, taking this expression in the widest sense of the word.

  When animals fight with one another, when they associate for a common purpose, when they warn one another in danger, when they come to the rescue of one another, when they display pain or joy, they manifest impulses of the same kind as are considered among the moral attributes of man. The range of their passions is even as extensive as that of the human mind, and I am at a loss to perceive a difference of kind between them, however much they may differ in degree and in the manner in which they are expressed. The gradations of the moral faculties among the higher animals and man are, moreover, so imperceptible, that to deny to the first a certain sense of responsibility and consciousness would certainly be an exaggeration of the difference between animals and man. There exists, besides, as much individuality, within their respective capabilities, among animals as among men, as every sportsman, or every keeper of menageries, or every farmer and shepherd can testify who has had a large experience with wild, or tamed, or domesticated animals.

  This argues strongly in favor of the existence in every animal of an immaterial principle similar to that which, by its excellence and superior endowments, places man so much above animals. Yet the principle exists unquestionably, and whether it be called soul, reason, or instinct, it presents in the whole range of organized beings a series of phenomena closely linked together; and upon it are based not only the higher manifestations of the mind, but the very permanence of the specific differences which characterize every organism. Most of the arguments of philosophy in favor of the immortality of man apply equally to the permanency of this principle in other living beings. May I not add that a future life, in which man should be deprived of that great source of enjoyment and intellectual and moral improvement which result from the contemplation of the harmonies of an organic world, would involve a lamentable loss, and may we not look to a spiritual concert of the combined worlds and all their inhabitants in presence of their Creator as the highest conception of Paradise?