Chapter I: Of THE NATURE OF ANIMALS (3)

It is not surprising that man, who knows so little of himself, who so frequently confounds his sensations with his ideas, who so imperfectly distinguishes the productions of the mind from the produce of his brain, should compare himself to the brute animals, and admit the only difference between them depended on the greater or less degree of perfection in the organs; it is not surprising that he should make them reason, determine, and understand, in the same manner with himself, and that he should attribute to them not only the qualities which he has, but even those he has not. When man, however, has once thoroughly examined and analyzed himself, he will discover the dignity of his being, he will feel the existence of his soul, he will cease to demean his nature, and, with a single glance, he will see the infinite distance which the Supreme Being has put between him and the brutes.

God alone knows the past, the present, and the future; eternal is his existence, and infinite is his knowledge. Man, whose duration is but for a few moments, perceives but those moments: by a living and immortal Power are those moments compared, distinguished, and arrayed; and That Power it is which enables man to know the present, judge of the past, and foresee the future. Deprive him of this divine light and you deface and obscure his being, you render him merely an animal, ignorant of the past, without conception of the future, and barely affectable by the present.