The Day After Death; Or, Our Future Life According to Science (New Edition)Figuier, Louis
Religion
The Day After Death; Or, Our Future Life According to Science (New Edition)
Figuier, Louis
Cosmology; Future life; Transmigration
The smallness of the bodies of these animals is not an argument to
be used against the fact of their intelligence. In nature nothing is
great, and nothing is little; the monstrous whale and the invisible
gnat are equal in the presence of its laws; both one and the other
have received as their inheritance the degree of intelligence which is
suitable to its need, and it is not by the scale of grandeur that we
must measure the degrees of mind among living creatures. Every one is
familiar with the prodigies of intelligence performed by associated
bees, and by the ants, in their camps and hills. The habits of these
two species of insects, which have been studied and expounded only
in our age, fill us with wonder, almost with awe. But the bees and
the ants do not constitute an exception among the insect class. It
is very probable that in the entire class intelligence exists to the
same degree as in bees and ants, for we do not see why two species of
hymenopterous insects should exclusively possess this privilege, to
the exclusion of other species of the same order, and all the other
orders of the insect class. The fact is, that the bee has been studied
profoundly, because that insect is an object of agricultural industry,
and that, in consequence, it was for man's interest to understand
its customs. This accounts for the successful surmounting of the
difficulties attendant on the study of bees.
We may add, that the observer to whom our knowledge of bees is due,
Pierre Huber, of Geneva, who published his fine works at the end of the
last century, was blind, and that he was obliged to have recourse for
all his observations to the eyes of an illiterate servant, François
Burnens, which is a proof that this kind of study was not inordinately
difficult.
The habits of other species of insects, still unknown to us, must,
according to this, conceal marvels quite as great as those which the
Hubers have revealed in the case of bees and ants.
Let us conclude that insects have souls, since intelligence is a
faculty of the soul.
We may apply the same reasoning to fishes, reptiles, and birds.
In these three classes of animals intelligence progresses towards
perfection, the faculty of reason is manifest, and the degree of
intelligence seems to march at a progressive rate from the fish to the
reptile, and from the reptile to the bird.
In mammiferous animals we observe a degree of advance in intelligence
upon the classes of animals we have just named. But, ought we to
calculate the degree of intelligence of the different mammifers
according to the order in which naturalists have classed these animals?
Ought we to say that the strength of intelligence increases as we
follow the zoological distribution of Cuvier, that is to say, that it
rises from cetacea to carnivora, from carnivora to pachyderms, and from
pachyderms to ruminants, &c.? No, evidently not.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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