An Address

17

the Mind of God, though incomparably more
perfect, to be of the same nature as the Reason
of man. 1 could not myself assent to this assumption.
 But let that pass. We may readily admit
that Reason is man’s highest intellectual faculty.
Let us ask Reason to tell us something about the
other faculties of the mind.

We must remember that Reason is the only
rool that we have to work with, and that a tool
cannot work on itself. Temper and sharpen it
as you may, your chisel cannot cut itself. We
should therefore not expect too much.
Now, first of all, our Reason is distinguished by
being a conscious process : for example, I know
at this moment what I am driving at, and you
consciously take cognizance of my statements;
and we are agreed that animals cannot do this
sort of thing. But though they lack our logical
Reason, we see that they have some other kind
of mental activity whereby they are able to act
tightly, with an ingenuity that often baffles our
conscious skill, and a method which escapes our
Reason to unravel. One or two examples will
suffice. In the insect world it is not uncommon