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world. There is a criterion by which we may distinguish our voluntary acts or thoughts from those that are excited by our sensations: "The former are always employed about the _means_ to acquire pleasureable objects, or to avoid painful ones: while the latter are employed about the _possession_ of those that are already in our power." If we turn our eyes upon the fabric of our fellow animals, we find they are supported with bones, covered with skins, moved by muscles; that they possess the same senses, acknowledge the same appetites, and are nourished by the same aliment with ourselves; and we should hence conclude from the strongest analogy, that their internal faculties were also in some measure similar to our own. Mr. Locke indeed published an opinion, that other animals possessed no abstract or general ideas, and thought this circumstance was the barrier between the brute and the human world. But these abstracted ideas have been since demonstrated by Bishop Berkley, and allowed by Mr. Hume, to have no existence in nature, not even in the mind of their inventor, and we are hence necessitated to look for some other mark of distinction. The ideas and actions of brutes, like those of children, are almost perpetually produced by their present pleasures, or their present pains; and, except in the few instances that have been mentioned in this Section, they seldom busy themselves about the _means_ of procuring future bliss, or of avoiding future misery. Whilst the acquiring of languages, the making of tools, and the labouring for money; which are all only the _means_ of procuring pleasure; and the praying to the Deity, as another _means_ to procure happiness, are characteristic of human nature. * * * * * SECT. XVII. THE CATENATION OF MOTIONS. I. 1. _Catenations of animal motion._ 2. _Are produced by irritations, by sensations, by volitions._ 3. _They continue some time after they have been excited. Cause of catenation._ 4. _We can then exert our attention on other objects._ 5. _Many catenations of motions go on together._ 6. _Some links of the catenations of motions may be left out without disuniting the chain._ 7. _Interrupted circles of motion continue confusedly till they come to the part of the circle, where they were disturbed._ 8. _Weaker catenations are dissevered by stronger._ 9. _Then new catenations take place._ 10. _Much effort
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