On the other hand, the Judgments of the Understanding are binding only in relation to the objects of our Senses, which we _reflect_ under the forms of the Understanding. It is, as Leighton rightly defines it, "the faculty judging according to sense." Hence we add the epithet _human_, without tautology: and speak of the _human_ understanding, in disjunction from that of beings higher or lower than man. But there is, in this sense, no _human_ reason. There neither is nor can be but one reason, one and the same: even the light that lighteth every man's individual Understanding (_Discursus_), and thus maketh it a reasonable understanding, _discourse of reason--one only_, yet _manifold: it goeth through all understanding, and remaining in itself regenerateth all other powers_. The same writer calls it likewise _an influence from the Glory of the Almighty_, this being one of the names of the Messiah, as the _Logos_, or co-eternal Filial Word. And most noticeable for its coincidence is a fragment of Heraclitus, as I have indeed already noticed elsewhere;--"To discourse rationally it behoves us to derive strength from that which is common to all men: for all human Understandings are nourished by the one DIVINE WORD."
Beasts, we have said, partake of understanding. If any man deny this, there is a ready way of settling the question. Let him give a careful perusal to Hüber's two small volumes, on bees and ants (especially the latter), and to Kirby and Spence's Introduction to Entomology; and one or other of two things must follow. He will either change his opinion as irreconcilable with the facts; or he must deny the facts, which yet I cannot suppose, inasmuch as the denial would be tantamount to the no less extravagant than uncharitable assertion, that Hüber, and the several eminent naturalists, French and English, Swiss, German, and Italian, by whom Hüber's observations and experiments have been repeated and confirmed, had all conspired to impose a series of falsehoods and fairy-tales on the world. I see no way at least, by which he can get out of this dilemma, but by over-leaping the admitted rules and fences of all legitimate discussion, and either transferring to the word, Understanding, the definition already appropriated to Reason, or defining Understanding _in genere_ by the _specific_ and _accessional_ perfections which the _human_ understanding derives from its co-existence with reason and free-will in the same individual person; in plainer words, from its being exercised by a self-conscious and responsible creature. And, after all, the supporter of Harrington's position would have a right to ask him, by what other name he would designate the faculty in the instances referred to? If it be not Understanding, what is it?