"The bodies of brute animals are actuated by a principle of a like kind with what is placed in man, but greatly inferior with regard to the degrees of reason and intelligence which it possesses: in the more perfect brutes, this principle is plainly intelligent as well as sentient; and their actions so evidently shew them to be endued, not only with a strong memory, but with reflexion and some degrees of reason, that it is really wonderful to find Descartes and his disciples so far imposing upon themselves, as seriously to believe these were machines formed entirely of matter, and, as it were, so many curious pieces of clock-work wound up and set a-going."
An Essay on the Vital and Other Involuntary Motions of Animals
3 entries in ESTC (1751, 1763, 1768).<br>
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Robert Whytt, <u>An Essay on the Vital and Other Involuntary Motions of Animals</u> (Edinburgh: Printed by Hamilton, Balfour, and Neill, 1751). &lt;<a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=eCz7KJ_6XYIC">Link to Google Books</a>&gt;