« back to search

"The bodies of brute animals are actuated by a principle of a like kind with what is placed in man, but greatly inferior with regard to the degrees of reason and intelligence which it possesses: in the more perfect brutes, this principle is plainly intelligent as well as sentient; and their actions so evidently shew them to be endued, not only with a strong memory, but with reflexion and some degrees of reason, that it is really wonderful to find Descartes and his disciples so far imposing upon themselves, as seriously to believe these were machines formed entirely of matter, and, as it were, so many curious pieces of clock-work wound up and set a-going."

— Whytt, Robert (1714-1766)

Author

Whytt, Robert (1714-1766)

Work Title

An Essay on the Vital and Other Involuntary Motions of Animals

Place of Publication

Edinburgh

Publisher

Printed by Hamilton, Balfour, and Neill

Date

1751

Metaphor

"The bodies of brute animals are actuated by a principle of a like kind with what is placed in man, but greatly inferior with regard to the degrees of reason and intelligence which it possesses: in the more perfect brutes, this principle is plainly intelligent as well as sentient; and their actions so evidently shew them to be endued, not only with a strong memory, but with reflexion and some degrees of reason, that it is really wonderful to find Descartes and his disciples so far imposing upon themselves, as seriously to believe these were machines formed entirely of matter, and, as it were, so many curious pieces of clock-work wound up and set a-going."

Metaphor in Context

The bodies of brute animals are actuated by a principle of a like kind with what is placed in man, but greatly inferior with regard to the degrees of reason and intelligence which it possesses: in the more perfect brutes, this principle is plainly intelligent as well as sentient; and their actions so evidently shew them to be endued, not only with a strong memory, but with reflexion and some degrees of reason, that it is really wonderful to find Descartes and his disciples so far imposing upon themselves, as seriously to believe these were machines formed entirely of matter, and, as it were, so many curious pieces of clock-work wound up and set a-going. Nor is it less surprising that the generality of Theological writers should, till of late, have been so far mistaken in this matter, as not to have perceived, that, after once admitting all the actions of the most perfect brutes to result from mere mechanism, the ascribing every thing in man to no higher a principle, would be a natural and easy consequence.
(Sect XI, pp. 291-2)