ground for the theory of the materialist, that there
is no essential difference between the two species of existences. But
when we pass beyond the mere power of acting, to the additional power of
_surveying_ or _inspecting_ an act, and of forming an estimate of its
relations to moral law, we find a faculty in man that makes him differ in
kind from the brute. No brute animal, however high up the scale, however
ingenious and sagacious he may be, can ever look back and think of what
he has done, "his thoughts the meanwhile accusing or else excusing him."

The mere power of performance, is, after all, not the highest power. It
is the superadded power of calmly looking over the performance, and
seeing _what_ has been done, that marks the higher agency, and denotes a
loftier order of existence than that of the animal or of material nature.
If the mere ability to work with energy, and produce results, constituted
the highest species of power, the force of gravitation would be the
loftiest energy in the universe. Its range of execution is wider than
that of any other created principle. But it is one of the lower and least
important of agencies, because it is blind. It is destitute of the power
of self-inspection. It does not know _what_ it does, or _why_. "Man,"
says Pascal,[1] "is but a reed, and the weakest in all nature; yet he is
a reed that _thinks_. The whole material universe does not need to arm
itself, in order to crush him. A vapor, a drop of water is enough to
destroy him. But if the whole universe of matter should combine to crush
him, man would be more noble than that which destroyed him. For he would
be _conscious_ that he was dying, while, of the advantage which the
material universe had obtained over him, that universe would know
nothing." The action of a little child is altogether nothing and vanity
compared with the energy of the earthquake or the lightning, so far as
the exhibition of force and the mere power to act is concerned; but, on
the other hand, it is more solemn than centuries of merely natural
processes, and more momentous than all the material phenomena that have
ever filled the celestial spaces, when we remember that it is the act of
a thinking agent, and a self-conscious creature. The power to _survey_
the act, when united with the power to act, sets mind infinitely above
matter, and places the action of instinct, wonderful as it is, infinitely
below the action of self-consciousness. The proud wor