Go, thou sluggard, learn arts and industry from the bee, and from the ant!

Go, proud reasoner, and call the worm thy sister!

XVII. Conclusion.

It was before observed how much the superior accuracy of our sense of touch contributes to increase our knowledge; but it is the greater energy and activity of the power of volition (as explained in the former Sections of this work) that marks mankind, and has given him the empire of the world.

There is a criterion by which we may distinguish our voluntary acts or thoughts from those that are excited by our sensations:  “The former are always employed about the means to acquire pleasureable objects, or to avoid painful ones:  while the latter are employed about the possession of those that are already in our power.”

If we turn our eyes upon the fabric of our fellow animals, we find they are supported with bones, covered with skins, moved by muscles; that they possess the same senses, acknowledge the same appetites, and are nourished by the same aliment with ourselves; and we should hence conclude from the strongest analogy, that their internal faculties were also in some measure similar to our own.

Mr. Locke indeed published an opinion, that other animals possessed no abstract or general ideas, and thought this circumstance was the barrier between the brute and the human world.  But these abstracted ideas have been since demonstrated by Bishop Berkley, and allowed by Mr. Hume, to have no existence in nature, not even in the mind of their inventor, and we are hence necessitated to look for some other mark of distinction.

The ideas and actions of brutes, like those of children, are almost perpetually produced by their present pleasures, or their present pains; and, except in the few instances that have been mentioned in this Section, they seldom busy themselves about the means of procuring future bliss, or of avoiding future misery.

Whilst the acquiring of languages, the making of tools, and the labouring for money; which are all only the means of procuring pleasure; and the praying to the Deity, as another means to procure happiness, are characteristic of human nature.

* * * * *

SECT.  XVII.

THE CATENATION OF MOTIONS.

I. 1. Catenations of animal motion. 2. Are produced by irritations, by sensations, by volitions. 3. They continue some time after they have been excited.  Cause of catenation. 4. We can then exert our attention on other objects. 5. Many catenations of motions go on together. 6. Some links of the catenations of motions may be left out without disuniting the chain. 7. Interrupted circles of motion continue confusedly till they come to the part of the circle, where they were disturbed. 8. Weaker catenations are dissevered by stronger.