By an intelligence similar to that of man it is impossible that brutes can have any certain knowledge of futurity, since in that respect, his ideas are always imperfect, and full of doubt. Then why, on such slight grounds, invest them with a quality so sublime? Why, without necessity degrade the human species? Is it not unreasonable to attribute their source to mechanical laws, established, like all the other laws of Nature, by the will of the Creator? The certainty with which brutes are supposed to act, and be determined, might alone convince us, that every thing they do is merely mechanical. The essential characteristics of reason are, doubt, deliberation, and comparison; but motions and actions, which announce nothing but decision and certainty, exhibit at once a proof of mechanism and stupidity. Previous, however, to the full admission of these asserted facts, which seem to lessen those ideas we ought to maintain of the power and will of our Divine Creator, ought we not to enquire whether they really exist, or have sufficient ground to support the supposition? The boasted foresight of ants in collecting sustenance for the winter is an evident error, since it has been found that during that season they remain in a torpid state; therefore, this pretended foresight, supposes them to provide that which it also must have informed them would be entirely necessary. Is not the sensation that they enjoy their food with more quiet and tranquillity in their fixed residence, alone sufficient to account for their conveying thither more than they can possibly make use of? The same applies to bees, in collecting more wax and honey than their necessities require. Does not this evince they are actuated by feeling, and not intelligence, especially if we reflect that if it proceeded from former experience, that would teach them to decline such unnecessary labour; which so far from being the case, they continue to extract wax and honey as long as there is a succession of fresh flowers, and were it possible to continue that their labours would never cease. Field-mice have also been instanced, whose abodes are generally divided; in one hole they deposit their young, in the other their food, the latter of which they constantly fill; but here it should be observed that when they provide those apartments for themselves, the latter are always small, yet if they find a large hole under a tree which they chuse for their abode, they fill that also; a fact which renders it clear they have no intelligence of the nature of their wants, but are guided by the capacity of the place they select for depositing their food.