Under this last transformation, these purely materialized beings are chemically analyzed in the great laboratory of nature, and their component parts are separated; thus the bones become rocks, the flesh earth, the spirits air, the blood water, the gristle clay and the ashes of the will are converted into the element of fire.
In this class we enumerate whales, elephants, hippopotami, and divers other brutes, which visibly exhibit accumulations of matter that must speedily triumph over the less material portions of their natures." "And yet, Doctor, there are facts that militate against the theory; the elephant, for instance, is accounted one of the most intelligent of all the quadrupeds." "A mere false demonstration, sir.

Nature delights in these little equivocations; thus, we have false suns, false rainbows, false prophets, false vision, and even false philosophy.

There are entire races of both our species, too, as the Congo and the Esquimaux, for yours, and baboons and the common monkeys, that inhabit various parts of the world possessed by the human species, for ours, which are mere shadows of the forms and qualities that properly distinguish the animal in its state of protection." "How, sir! are you not, then, of the same family as all the other monkeys that we see hopping and skipping about the streets ?" "No more, sir, than you are of the same family as the flat-nosed, thick-lipped, low-browed, ink-skinned negro, or the squalid, passionless, brutalized Esquimaux.

I have said that nature delights in vagaries; and all these are no more than some of her mystifications.
Of this class is the elephant, who, while verging nearest to pure materialism, makes a deceptive parade of the quality he is fast losing.
Instances of this species of playing trumps, if I may so express it, are common in all classes of beings.

How often, for instance, do men, just as they are about to fail, make a parade of wealth, women seem obdurate an hour before they capitulate, and diplomatists call Heaven to be a witness of their resolutions to the contrary, the day before they sign and seal! In the case of the elephant, however, there is a slight exception to the general rule, which is founded on an extraordinary struggle between mind and matter, the former making an effort that is unusual, and which may be said to form an exception to the ordinary warfare between these two principles, as it is commonly conducted in the retrogressive class of animals.