Animals seem to be as amply endowed with capacities by the Creator, for their sphere of existence, as man appears to be for his; and the Deity as evidently designed their happiness, as man's. He has framed them after the same great outline, and with no greater difference in this respect than is consistent with difference of species. He has endued them with senses, and a principle to take knowledge of the impressions they were designed to convey; and He has placed the means of happiness within their reach, as well as given the power to reach them. This much is self-evident. As to the proof that the principle commonly known as instinct manifests memory and reason, the arguments employed may be obscure; but the facts themselves, on reflection, carry conviction to the mind. To account for these manifestations on any other hypothesis, would be impossible; and to draw any other inference from the facts would be equally impossible; and to pronounce all these phenomena the workings of instinct, a name without a tangible meaning; a designation that prohibits inquiry, because it pretends to furnish an explanation of itself; would be to rest for ever in profound ignorance of the whole subject, when truth might be reached by investigation.
All the intellectual manifestations of mind are treated under four general divisions. One of them is memory; and all we know of it is, simply that there is a principle within us that remembers. Animals likewise have a principle that remembers. If then this principle is a unit in man, and (by parity of reason) in animals, why does not the proof of this one quality carry the whole subject? Can it be asserted that any other principle remembers than the one that reasons? Can any distinction be taken between the dog's remembrance of his master on his return, and the remembrance of the wife? One is as absolute as the other. It is no matter how feeble the endowments of a man may be, he still possesses mind; its memory may be weak, and its reasoning power be confined to the most simple processes; but yet the principle is within him, and as no radical distinction can be made between the memory of the feeble and the powerful intellect, so none can be made between the memory of an animal and of a man.