to facilitate their Digeftion; this teaches the Dog, with a furfeited Stomach, to run to a particular Kind of Grafs to procure a Vomit; to this we owe all the excellent and wonderful Operations to be found among Beafts and Birds, Reptiles and Infects; many of which feem to exceed the highest Improvements of human Reason and Invention. But why must all this be owing to Instinct? Since we cannot refuse them a knowing Faculty, why fhould we give them a needless Instinct? These wonderful Operations may be, for aught we know, the fimple Effects of their Understanding: And, fince it is folely in Confequence of a knowing Faculty, that Man performs the fame Operations, why fhould not the fame Principle also rule in the Brutes? And where would be the Heresy of believing or affirming, that those Actions, which Brutes are fupposed to perform by mere Inftinct, are performed in Confequence of their Understandings, with Understanding and Reafon? Is fuch a thing impoffible? Does either Reafon or Revelation forbid it? Are they not equally poffible to their Omnipotent Creator? And can any reasonable Doubt be made whether they were not endued with every Perfection that their Rank in the Scale of Beings required? And would it not be a great Imperfection to want the Means of knowing and procuring whatever was requifite in the common Order of Nature, for the Prefervation of the Individuals, and the Propagation of the Species? And, fince it cannot be denied that every Species of Beings have that Power, I fee nothing abfurd or unphilofophical in fuppofing that the All-wife and Omnipotent Author of Nature has given each of them fuch Faculties as are proportionable to M 4 their

their Wants and Capacities, and the Part they fill in the univerfal Syftem. Is there either Abfurdity or Herefy in fuppofing, that the fame infinite Power that could form the Body of the moft minute Infect, with fuch exquifite Proportion and Beauty, could, at the fame time, with the fame Eafe, provide the proper Inhabitant to animate and govern it, and answer all the Purposes of its Creation? He that can think otherwife, must have been either a very ignorant, or a very indolent, Obferver of Nature. The Scriptures directly call this Knowledge by the Name of Wisdom, Prov. xxx. 24. There be four Things that are little upon Earth; but they are exceeding wife. The Ants are a People not strong, yet they prepare their Meat in the Summer. The Conies are but a feeble Folk, yet they make their Houfes in the Rocks. The Locufts have no King, yet ga they forth all of them by Bands. The Spider taketh hold with her Hands, and is in Kings Palaces. Holy Fob fuppofes the fame Thing, that the whole Brute-Creation act by Wisdom and Understanding, of fuch a Kind and Degree, as is proper for their State and Condition in the Scale of Beings. Thus, Ch. xxxix. 14, 15, 16. 17, speaking of the Ostrich, he observes, that he leaves her Eggs in the Earth, and warms them in the Duft, and forgets that the Foot may crush them, or that the wild Beaft may break them. She is hardened against her Young-ones, as though they were not hers; her Labour is in vain without Fear, because God has deprived her of Wisdom, neither hath be imparted to her Underftanding. The Fact is afferted by all Travelers that the Ostrich leaves her Eggs in the Sand, to be hatched by the Sun; which unnatural Difregard for her Offfpring is fo remarkable, that, when they see a Mother

wha

who has little Tendernefs for her Children, they compare her to an Ostrich; to which the Prophet Jeremiah alludes, in his Book of Lamentations, Ch. iv. 3. The Daughter of my People is become cruel, like the Ostriches in the Wilderness. In fhort, the Ostrich is allowed on all hands to be a very ftupid foolish Bird, deftitute of that Prudence and Caution which are vifible in every other Family of Infects, Birds, and Beafts; for it is particularly observed in her, that, when she is pursued by the Hunters, she runs to hide her Head, and particularly her Eyes, behind a Tree, all the rest of her large Body is exposed to view; but, as fhe no longer fees the Hunter, fhe wifely imagines he does not fee her, and that therefore fhe has no Danger to apprehend, Now this whole abfurd and ridiculous Conduct the infpired Writer afcribes to her Want of that Wisdom, Understanding, and common Senfe, which are to be found in every other Species of Beings, for the Production and Prefervation of their several Families. Because God hath deprived her of Wif dom, neither bath he imparted to her Understanding, v. 17. Were we now to extend our Inquiries to the Polity, Architecture, and Oeconomy, of Bees and Wafps, and all the other Tribes and Families of Infects, we fhould find them, in many respects, excellent Monitors to the Bulk of Mankind. "The Bee-hive, for "inftance, is a School to which Numbers of Peo"ple ought to be fent. Prudence, Industry, and "Benevolence, public Spirit and Diligence, Oeco

nomy, Neatness, and Temperance, are not only "practised by them in the most exemplary Manner,

Spectacle de la Nature, Dial. 7. p. 135,

but

"but ftrongly reprefented to us by their Example. "Look on a Swarm of Bees, and obferve the Dif "pofition that influences every Individual; they all

labour for the general Advantage; they are all fub

"miffive to the Laws and Regulations of the Com"munity; there is no particular Intereft, and con"fequently no Emulations nor Competitions for "Gain or Glory; no Diftinctions, but thofe which "Nature, and the Neceffities of the Family, have "introduced among them. We never fee them "diffatisfied with their Condition, or inclinable to "abandon the Hive, in Difguft to find themfelves *Slaves or neceffitous. On the contrary, they think "themselves in perfect Freedom, and perfect Afflu*ence, as indeed they are: They are free, because "they depend only upon the Laws; they are happy, "because the Concourfe of their feveral Labours ❝inevitably produce an Abundance, that constitutes "the Riches of each Individual. Let us compare hu"man Societies with this, and they will appear alto

gether monftrous. Neceffity, Reason, and Philofo❝phy, have established them under the commendable "Pretence of mutual Aids and Benefits; but a Spirit "of Selfifhnefs deftroys all; and one half of Man*kind, to load themselves with Superfluities, leave "the other half deftitute of the common Neceffaries "of Life." In fhort, upon the strictest and closest Inquiry we can make into the feveral Tribes of Families of the Brute-Creation, it will appear, that they are all directed and act by fome Principle analogous at left, and equivalent to what we call Understanding in ourselves; and why we fhould call it by any other Name in them, I confefs I am at a Lofs to determine.

If

If then the feveral Species of Brutes do, by the Strength of their own Understandings, think, reason, project, contrive, and perform every Office within their proper Sphere of Life and Action, in a just and due proportion to what we do in ours, they must be allowed to have fome immaterial Principle within them, in which thefe Faculties are inherent, and by which they are directed. Now, to my poor Apprehenfion, Understanding without a Soul, and a Soul that is not a Spirit, appears quite as abfurd as Light without Flame, or Flame without Fire; the one, I think, naturally fuppofes and includes the other.

The Great Mr. Locke, in his Effay on Human Underftanding, lib. 2, cap. 11. allows, that Brutes have Ideas, and that they reason, though they are not capable of comparing and compounding these Ideas, and reasoning abftractedly, as we do. Yet (fays he) if they have any Ideas at all, and are not mere Machines, as fome would have them, we cannot deny them to have fome Reafon. It feems to me as evident, that they do in fome Inftances reafon, as that they have Senfe; but it is only in particular Ideas, juft as they received them from their Senfes.- Juft as they received them from their Senses! Why, how should it be else? What is the Foundation of our Reason, but those particular Ideas we receive from our Senfes ? Ideas are Images, excited or impreffed upon the Soul by external Objects, through the Mediation of the Senses; and the enlarging, comparing, and combining these Ideas, and forming practical Conclufions from them, is the whole Province of human Reafon. This philofophical Limitation of the Understanding of Brutes, founds a little aukwardly from this great Man, because he

has