“The establishment of sentinels by gregarious animals to warn the herd of the approach of danger; the recollection of punishment inflicted, for a particular action, and the subsequent avoidance or concealment of that action; the teachability of many animals, and their capacity of forming new habits, or improving the old ones, are instances of the same kind of intellectual power, and _are quite different from instinct_, strictly speaking. It is this faculty which especially predominates over the other in the higher classes of animals, and which finally attains its maximum of development in the human species.” With these testimonies from such eminent witnesses, we leave the friends of the rational argument inextricably mixed up with the brute creation. The legitimate result of their theory is to confer immortality upon all orders of animated existence. We are sometimes accused of degrading man to the level of the brute. But if our friends of the other side elevate all brutes up to the level of man, how does that practically differ from what they accuse us of doing? The result is the same. If all come at last upon the same level, it matters not whether brutes come up or man goes down. But our view is not open to this objection. While we deny that immortality is proved for either man or beast by any vital or mental powers which they may exhibit, our theory finds a superior position for man in his more refined mental and physical organization, whereby he becomes possessed of a higher mental and moral nature, and is the proper recipient of the hope of immortality. Another fact on which it is supposed that an argument for immortality can be founded is, _The capacities of the soul._ The mind of man, it is argued, by its wonderful achievements, and its lofty aspirations, shows itself capable of some higher and better state of being than we at present enjoy. And from this the conclusion is easy (if people will not stop to scan very critically the connection) that such a state of being inevitably awaits mankind, in which they are destined to live forever. But this argument, which, stripped of its disguise, is simply an egotistical assertion, I am fit to be a god, and therefore I am a god, will be found to collapse under very slight pressure. Mr. J. Panton Ham describes it in fitting terms, when he speaks of it as follows:--