God's omnipotence was not then denied: it was in His power to communicate to the organized matter of animals pleasure, pain, remembrance, the combination of some ideas; it was in His power to give to several of them, as the ape, the elephant, the hound, the talent of perfecting themselves in the arts which are taught them: not only was it in His power to endow almost all carnivorous animals with the talent of making war better in their experienced old age than in their confiding youth; not only was it in His power to do this, but He had done it, as the whole world could witness. Pereira and Descartes maintained against the whole world that it was mistaken; that God had played the conjurer; that He had given to animals all the instruments of life and sensation, that they might have neither sensation or life properly so called. But some pretended philosophers, I know not whom, in order to answer Descartes' chimera, threw themselves into the opposite chimera very liberally, giving "pure spirit" to toads and insects. "_In vitium ducit culpæ fuga._" Betwixt these two follies, the one depriving of feeling the organs of feeling, the other lodging pure spirit in a bug--a mean was imagined, viz., instinct. And what is "instinct"? Oh! it is a substantial form; it is a plastic form; it is a--I know not what--it is instinct. I will be of your opinion, so long as you apply to most things "I know not what"; so long as your philosophy shall begin and end with "I know not"; but when you "affirm," I shall say to you with Prior, in his poem on the vanity of the world: Then vainly the philosopher avers That reason guides our deeds, and instinct theirs. How can we justly different causes frame, When the effects entirely are the same? Instinct and reason how can we divide? 'Tis the fool's ignorance, and the pedant's pride. The author of the article on "Soul," in the "Encyclopædia," explains himself thus: "I represent to myself the soul of beasts as a substance immaterial and intelligent." But of what kind? It seems to me, that it must be an active principle having sensations, and only sensations.... If we reflect on the nature of the souls of beasts, it does not of itself give us any grounds for believing that their spirituality will save them from annihilation. I do not understand how you represent to yourself an immaterial substance. To represent a thing to yourself is to make to yourself an image of it; and hitherto no one has been able to paint the mind. I am willing to suppose that by the word "represent," the author means I "conceive"; for my part, I own that I do not conceive it. Still less do I conceive how a spiritual soul is annihilated, because I have no conception of creation or of nothing; because I never attended God's council; because I know nothing at all of the principle of things.