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PHYSIOLOGY AND PATHOLOGY. 247
saliva through violent rage : this last even to the degree,
that an excessively irritated dog may communicate hydro
phobia by its bite without being itself affected with rabies,
or even then contracting the disease and the same is also
asserted of cats and of cocks. The organism is further
deeply undermined by lasting grief, and may be mortally
affected by fright as well as by sudden joy. On the other
hand, all those inner processes and changes which only
have to do with the intellect and do not concern the will,
however great may be their importance, remain without
influence upon the machinery of the organism, with the
one exception, that mental activity, prolonged to excess,
fatigues and gradually exhausts the brain and finally under
mines the organism. This again confirms the fact that the
intellect is of a secondary character, and merely the organic
function of a single part, a product of life not the inner
;
most kernel of our being, not the thing in itself, not meta
physical, incorporeal, eternal, like the will : the will never
tires, never grows old, never learns, never improves by
practice, is in infancy what it is in old age, eternally one
and the same, and its character in each individual is un
changeable. Being essential moreover, it is likewise im
mutable, and therefore exists in animals as it does in us ;
for it does not, like the intellect, depend upon the perfection
of the organisation, but is in every essential respect in
all animals the same thing which we know so intimately.
Accordingly animals have all the feelings which belong to
man: joy, grief, fear, anger, love, hate, desire, envy, &c. &c.
The great difference between man and the brute creation
consists exclusively in the degrees of perfection of the in
tellect. This however is leading us too far from our sub
ject, so I refer my readers to my chief work, vol. ii. chap.
19, sub. 2.
After the cogent reasons just given in favour of the
primary agens in the inward machinery of the organism