The historian and the ethnographer must signs to general conceptions and abstract ideas; a power of enunciat- be called upon to show the hereditary standing deliberate judgments by articu-ing of each opinion and practice, and their inquiry must go back as far as antiquity or late sounds-language. These powers become manifest in ac-savagery can show a vestige, for there seems no human thought so primitive as to have lost tions which are deliberate operations im- its bearing on our own thought, nor so ancient plying the use of a self-conscious, re-as to have broken its connection with our life. flective, representative faculty. - Primitive Culture, vol. i., p. 409.

All men, then, agree in possessing the faculties above enumerated - namely, self-consciousness, reason, and will, with rational speech. It will not, probably, be contended by any naturalist that instinct ever rises to such a height as to possess those faculties actually, though many assert that it contains them potentially and in germ, and that there is, as Mr. Darwin says, no difference of kind, but only one of degree, between it and reason.

Since we are unable to converse with brutes, we can but divine and infer from their gestures, motions, and the sounds they emit, what may be the nature of their highest psychical powers. Now, in this process of inference, we necessarily risk being guilty of a fallacy similar to that of which a certain school of theology has shown us such a conspicuous in

and maintain with them that though no term can be used in precisely the same sense of man and of God, yet that none the less there is a certain relation of analogy between these two uses of the

same term.

is naturally bare in a sitting hen, and if an irritating substance be applied to the part so stripped, then not only will the local inflammation cause the capon to seek the contact of eggs and to sit, but even to act maternally to the young when they come to be hatched.

An exactly parallel but opposite error has taken place in biological science. But the distinction in kind between Descartes, that fruitful author of philo- instinct and reason, is shown both by the sophic error, deserted the old moderate fact that the former is not able to do view which affirmed that between the things specially characteristic of the highest psychical powers of man and latter, and by the fact that it can do other brutes there is a certain natural likeness things for which reason would, in like and analogy, and gave rise to the no- circumstances, be impotent. Thus, no tion that animals are nothing but wonder- animals employ rational language, nor do fully complex machines - an error nat- they deliberately act in concert, nor make urally resulting in the opposite one now use of antecedent experiences to intenso prevalent the error, namely, that tionally improve upon the past. Apes there is a substantial identity between are said, like dogs and cats, to warm the brute soul and the soul of man -bi- themselves with pleasure at deserted ological anthropomorphism. fires; yet, though they see wood burning,

It is this biological, or inverted, an-they are unable to add fresh fuel for their thropomorphism which has led to that comfort. Swallows will continue to build exaggerated interpretation of animal on a house which they can see has begun activities of which Mr. Darwin in his to be demolished. Flies will deposit "Descent of Man" has given us such their eggs on a carrion-plant instead of an ever-memorable example. Space does on animal matter. Bees show us, pernot here permit of the review of such haps, some of the most wonderful and asserted proofs of animal rationality, but complex of all instincts, and yet Sir they have been elsewhere considered John Lubbock has demonstrated, by a one after the other. As an example of series of most interesting and admirable the hasty attribution of human qualities experiments, that there is such an habitto brutes, on account of certain superfi-ual absence of any intercommunication cial resemblances, we may take a sitting between them as to facts, as to fairly lead bird. It is, no doubt, true that the par- to the inference that their communicaent birds have keen parental emotions, tions concern their feelings only. yet a particular conspicuous act has had very undue weight assigned to it as a proof of the existence of such emotions. What praises of the patient fidelity of the bird sitting on her unhatched progeny do we not meet with, and yet this constancy is promoted by something very different from maternal tenderness! In truth, a multitude of branching arteries and veins furnish such an abundance of blood to the bird's breast as to cause it to seek in the contact of the eggs a refreshing sensation. Cabanis and Dugès tell us that if a capon be plucked in that region which the 19th of March, 1874, and another read before the

But instinct can do things impossible to reason. Thus, chickens newly hatched will so correctly adjust their movements as at once to pick up various objects. Some young puppies, M. Gratiolet tells us, that had never seen a wolf, were thrown into convulsions by the smell of a small portion of wolf-skin. Birds of the first year migrate readily to avoid a cold, of which they can have no knowledge. The young female wasp (Sphex),

*Sec a paper read before the Linnæan Society on same society on the 17th of December, 1874. In the latter, after exposing the hasty inferences which had * We say 66 gave rise to," because Descartes did not induced observers to attribute to bees moral qualities, really himself maintain that animals were pure ma- the existence of which Sir John Lubbock's investigachines. He allowed feeling to the animal, and said:tions quite disproved, the author went on to give rea"Je ne lui refuse pas même le sentiment, en tant qu'il depend des organes du corps; ainsi mon opinion n'est pas si cruelle aux animaux." Professor Huxley (Fortnightly Review for November, 1874, p. 563) quotes from Descartes the following words: - Mais le plus grand de tous les préjugés que nous ayons retenus de notre enfance, est celui de croire que les bêtes pensent." But these very true words do not imply that Descartes thought animals devoid of feeling or imagination.

t See Quarterly Review for July, 1871, pp. 67-87. Rapports du Physique et du Moral, ed. i., p. 127.

sons which seemed to him to make it probable that a
certain power of communicating perceptions exists
amongst ants. These papers on insect psychology
offer a truly admirable contrast to the crude, hasty, and
ill-considered assertions of so many uncritical writers
on such subjects, who seem to have no fear of "in-
verted anthropomorphism" before their eyes.
care and scrupulous candour of Sir John Lubbock are
the more admirable, because the philosophy he seems
to adopt would naturally rather incline him to favour
views which he nevertheless treats with strict impar
tiality and justice.

The

without maternal experience, will seize | stimuli to their acts.—Psychology, vol. i., pp. caterpillars or spiders, and, stinging them 323-4.

in a certain definite spot, paralyze them And again he says:

It is anatomically demonstrable that the

and so deprive them of all power of motion (and probably also of sensation), without depriving them of life. She pairing and nidification of birds in the spring,

places them thus paralyzed in her nest is preceded by constitutional changes which with her eggs, so that the grubs when are probably produced by more food and hatched may be able to subsist on a liv-ference that the whole series of processes in the higher temperature. And it is a rational ining prey unable to escape from, or resist rearing of a brood are severally gone through, their defenceless and all but powerless not with any recognition of remote ends, but destroyers. Now, it is absolutely impos- solely made under the stimulus of conditions sible that the consequences of its actions continuously present. can have been intellectually apprehended Also, he admits that we find this by the parent wasp. Had she reason, and not her natural instinct, she could higher order of correspondence in time, only learn to perform such actions scarcely more than foreshadowed among the through experience and the teaching (by higher animals, and definitely exhibited only when we arrive at the human race. precept or example) of older wasps. Now, if such complex actions can be And again :performed in this unconscious manner by insects, why may not the most seemingly rational actions of higher animals be performed in a similar manner? Some such actions, indeed, singularly resemble those of Sphex. Even as to mammals, one writer tells us : —

Only when we come to the human race are correspondences of this degree of speciality exhibited with distinctness and frequency. Op. cit., p. 338.

He also makes a very important admission when he says:

It might fairly be said that the Indian fish, which catches insects flying over the surface by hitting them with jets of water, exhibits an adjustment of inner relations to outer rela

I dug out five young pole-cats, comfortably embedded in dry, withered grass; and in a side hole, of proper dimensions for such a larder, I poked out forty large frogs and two toads, all alive, but merely capable of sprawl-tions as special as that shown by the archer ing a little. On examination I found that the whole number, toads and all, had been purposely and dexterously bitten through the brain. See Magazine of Natural History, vol. vi., p. 206.

(who shoots high according to the distance of the object aimed at); but considering that in the fish nothing more is implied than an automatic connection between certain visual impressions and certain muscular contractions, it cannot be held that there is anything like the complexity of correspondence. - Op. cit.,

P. 353.

Thus, then, both by what it can do, and by what it cannot do, instinct exhibits its fundamental distinctness from reason. But, indeed, there is no difficulty in quotSurely the very same principle may be ing from our best-known evolutionists applied to explain the actions of the parthe most striking declarations as to the rot, the pointer, the sapajou cracking his wide difference between the highest nut with a stone, or the chimpanzee psychical faculties of men and brutes. drinking out of his tea-cup. There is Mr. Darwin himself is constrained to ad- nothing in any of these actions indicating mit, that there is "no doubt" but that a power different in kind from that evithe difference is "enormous." Mr. Her-dently possessed by the fish, so aiming bert Spencer also makes some noteworthy admissions. E.g., he remarks as

to

birds that fly from inland to the seaside to
feed when the tide is out, and cattle that re-
turn to the farmyard at milking-time.
Even here there is not a purely intelligent
adjustment of inner to outer sequences, for
creatures accustomed to eat or to be milked
at regular intervals come to have recurrences
of constitutional states, and the sensations
accompanying these states form the proximate

* Descent of Man, vol. ii., p. 34.

his watery jet as to hit in the air an ob ject seen from beneath the water in spite of the effects of refraction. Finally, may be cited the following passage:

The animal's nervous system is played upon by external objects, the clustered properties of which draw out answering chords of feelings, followed by faintly reverberating chords of further feelings; but it is otherwise passive-it cannot evolve a consciousness that is independent of the immediate environment. Op. cit., pp. 564-5.

Here we have the necessary results of

an absence of self-consciousness. Be- is so glaring, that we need not wonder at ings devoid of self-consciousness

differentiate nothing consciously; they move, but they know not where, or why, or when; they see, but they know not colour as distinguished from sound, which they hear equally unconsciously. They know not their eye as such; they have senses and perceive, but they know not anything as such. Memory they may have, but they distinguish not the remembrance from the perception. The Psychology of Scepticism and Phenomenalism. By James Andrews. Glasgow: J. Maclehose, 1874.

It is no less decided a sensationalist than Mr. Lewes who has of late made what is perhaps the most unequivocal declaration as to the great difference -a difference even in kind between the highest psychical faculties of brutes, and our own mental powers. He tells us :The animal feels the cosmos, and adapts himself to it. Man feels the cosmos but he also thinks it. - Problems of Life and Mind, pp. 123-4.

profoundly meditative minds having been led to reject with scorn the hypothesis which seeks for an explanation of human intelligence in the functions of the bodily organism common to man and animals, and having had recourse to the hypothesis of a spiritual agent superadded to the organism. — Op. cit., p. 157.

He also says that "animal imagination is reproductive, but not plastic: it never constructs;" and describes † the "knowledge" of the brute as "such registrations of experience as suffice to guide his actions in the satisfaction of immedibetween animal and human intelligence ate impulses." Finally, he tells us that there is a gap, which can only be bridged over by an addition from without."

66

But long ago the world-renowned physiologist, John Müller, clearly laid down such distinctions, saying § that brutes may easily enough form associations between sensible perceptions, but that to form abstract conceptions of such operations as of something common to many under the notion of cause and effect, is a perfect impossibility to them. He distinctly says that :

Circles differ from circles in degree; they differ from ellipses in kind. Whether large or small the circle has the same properties, The cause of this difference between man and these are different from the properties of and beasts does not lie in the comparative the ellipse. It is true that by insensible gra- lucidity or obscurity of the impressions made dations the circle may flatten into an ellipse, or the two foci of the ellipse may blend into there is assuredly no superiority in the human on their minds respectively; for in this respect one, and form a circle. But so long as there mind. I am, therefore, of opinion that the are two foci, the ellipse has its characteristic human mind also would never derive from the properties. In like manner the boundaries of the animal and human may be found insen- from habit, the general abstract idea of caumere experience afforded by the senses, and sibly blending at certain points; but when-sality, unless it had a certain power of abstrac

tion

ever the "animal circle" has become transformed into the "human ellipse,' by the -a power, namely, of forming a mental introduction of a second centre, the difference of two things of which one requires the sucsomething out of the returning combinations ceases to be one of degree, and becomes one cession of the other. See Müller's Physiolof kind, the germ of infinite variations. —Op.ogy, translated by Dr. Baly, 1842, vol. ií., p.

cit., pp. 153-4.

1347.

This remarkable passage contains even He adds that although dogs will be a stronger argument in favour of the dis- come accustomed to perceive that hats tinctness in kind between the faculties of and caps of various forms are put on the men and brutes, even than Mr. Lewes head, to recognize their master whether himself intends. It does so because Mr. naked or clothed, and sticks of different Lewes is wrong in saying that "by in-shapes, yet the notions of identity and sensible grades the circle may flatten constancy, as opposed to difference and into an ellipse." With the least degree variability, are beyond the limits of their of flattening, the figure ceases absolutely psychical powers. to be a circle, although our senses may It is undeniable, then, that instinct, as fail to detect the aberration. Mr. Lewes made known to us in and by brute anialso admits that brutes have "no con-mals, is something very different from ceptions, no general ideas, no symbols reason in its developed condition. There of logical operations," and affirms that the absurdity of thinking brutes could be rational

Op, cit., pp. 154-5.

Op. cit., p. 169.

† Op. cit., p. 250.

Op. cit., p. 156. The italics are not Mr. Lewes's. See Müller's "Physiology," translated by Dr. Baly. 1842. Vol. ii., p. 1347.

being, then, a broad distinction between ] It is instinct, which I do not understand,

and of which I cannot give the smallest account, which makes the infant, at the time of birth, draw together its lips to commence the action of sucking.

the highest psychical faculties of men and brutes, we may proceed to consider whether any of the lower faculties of the former can throw any light upon such highest faculties of the latter. In con- Indeed, actions of this kind are comsidering our highest mental powers, we monly spoken of as instinctive; and such have already seen that besides deliberate are those we perform in walking through thought, inference, voluntary attention, crowded streets absorbed in a reverie, or active memory, will, moral judgment, and in running up or down stairs - when, inspeech, we have direct perception, asso-deed, any direction of the attention upon ciation, automatic attention, involuntary our successive actions tends but to mar memory, indeliberate volition, sympa- them. Allied to these actions, also, are thetic emotion, and emotional expression. the wonderful wanderings of somnambuIt may be well here to look a little fur-lists. Dr. Carpenter gives an amusing ther at these and some cognate matters, account of the spontaneous production though space will only permit us to do so of movements in response to felt stimuli in a very cursory manner. on the part of certain somnambulists. He says of such that if their arm be" advanced forward in the position of striking a blow," . . . "the somnambulist is very apt to put it into immediate execution." On one occasion, when Dr. Carpenter was present

A violent blow was struck, which chanced

In a healthy condition, digestion, assimilation, and growth are all performed by us in utter unconsciousness, as are the essential and intimate processes of respiration and reproduction; and all these are faculties shared by us, not only with every animal, but with every plant. Another faculty is shared by us with ani- to alight upon a second somnambulist within mals, and is ministered to by our nervous reach; his combativeness being thereby exsystem, though still without the interven-cited, the two closed and began to belabour tion of consciousness. This is the now one another with such energy that they were familiar power of "reflex action," a power which gives rise to movements in response to unfelt stimuli, such movements becoming positively more energetic with the advent of insensibility.*

There is, however, another class of

with difficulty separated. Although their passions were at the moment so strongly excited that, even when separated, they continued to utter furious denunciations against each other, yet a little discreet manipulation of their muscles soon calmed them, and put them into perfect good humour.*

or two of each month in a condition in which his consciousness seems entirely to disappear, and every sense but touch is dormant, while his acts are entirely directed through the suggestions offered to him by objects he feels.

human actions which result indeed from sensations, but which take place auto- A very singular and complete case of matically, and without the intervention automatism has occurred in France,† of our will, or even of our attention. where a man who was severely wounded Thus, when an object suddenly ap-in the head in the late war, passes a day proaches our eye, the eyelids may close almost simultaneously with the experience of the sensation. A sudden or unwonted sound will cause the whole frame to start - a direct and immediate sense-perception, producing a result before we have time to inquire into the cause of that af- But apart from all abnormality, such fection of our sense. The act of swal-actions as walking and talking, or playlowing an object placed far back in the ing the piano, show that wonderful efmouth is probably simply reflex, but, as fects may be produced by the sensibility, Dr. Alison has remarked,t the initial act apart from self-consciousness, and how of deglutition, that of passing the food wonderfully different is sense-perception backwards from the tongue to the isthmus from thought. faucium, is due to a sometimes almost irresistible propensity to swallow whatever grateful food or drink is in the mouth. Again, as to the act of sucking, Bichat

says:

For good examples see Dr. Carpenter's "Mental Physiology," 1874, p. 70.

† See Todd's Cyclopædia, vol. iii., p. 4.

Miss Cobbe's remarks on this matter are worthy of citation. She says of music-playing:

Here we seem not to have one alone, but a

Mental Physiology, 1874, p. 605.

† See Medical Times for July 28th, 1874. This case was cited by Professor Huxley, at Belfast. See Nature, of September 3rd, 1874, p. 364.