[Sidenote: How Man Can Decay.]

[Sidenote: Incidental as to Body.]

The brute obeys law unwittingly in the sustenance and transmission of
life. Man alone perceives and deduces law from a thousand facts, and
concludes a lawgiver from the law, and one Lord and Giver of Life "from
the unity and universality of force." The brute turns its eye skyward to
detect danger; but never measures or counts the stars, discerns the
movements of the planets, nor extends vision and hearing by telescope,
microscope, and megaphone, nor proves by the spectroscope the sameness
of stellar elements with those of our own world. The brute neither makes
history nor records it. He remembers, but does not recollect. His
affections are evanescent as to his kind, and only approach permanence
as they are fastened upon us. The brute cognizes external things, but
does not perceive their being. Thus man can live in an intellectual or
spiritual world as to his aims, motives, and occupations. He need touch
matter only so far as it is necessary to support the bodily strength on
which his spiritual and intellectual movement must depend for basis and
manifestation. On the other hand he may reduce the intellectual and
spiritual life to the lowest limit by giving the mastery to his physical
appetites. We feel instinctively that to do this last is unworthy of
manhood and destructive of the higher nature and intent. But who expects
a brute to do anything else but minister to his appetites? If he delays
a single second in doing it, it is only through fear of man or of some
stronger animal. His intellectual movements have this as an end in
complete reversal of the case with man. With the brute the intellect
seems incidental to the body. With man the body is incidental to the
intellect. One feels for this reason that man might live a purely