brute creation

After all, our possession of consciousness - this immaterial "mind stuff" - elevates us above mere brute creation, and puts us on a par with the angels and God himself.

These legends are, I think, worthy of special notice in moral history, as representing the first, and at the same time one of the most striking efforts ever made in Christendom to inculcate a feeling of kindness and pity towards the brute creation.

There is one point on which all geomancers are agreed, and that is that wherever any natural object has the shape or appearance, say, of a man or of some of the more intelligent or powerful of the brute creation, you have there a collection of the strongest forces of nature which will all work for the welfare of everything that lies within their influence.

Has _it_ given man that intelligence which, better than all zoological characters, especially distinguishes him from the brute creation?

On the continent of Europe, portions of which are interspersed with vast forests and uncultivated tracts, various individuals of the human species have, at different times, been discovered in a state no better than that of the brute creation.