Animal Psychology, the Old and the New 17 



with address, and in a manner that indicates intelli- 

 gence, it is because God, in making them for self- 

 preservation, has constituted their bodies in such a 

 way that they withdraw organically and without 

 knowing it from all that can destroy them and that 

 they seem to fear." 



A reaction from such views was inevitable. They 

 incurred the ridicule of La Fontaine, the protests 

 of the good Father Bonjeant, who believed that ani- 

 mals were inhabited by the souls of demons, and 

 the criticism of Thomasius, Gassendi, Leibnitz and 

 many others, of whom the French Inspector of For- 

 ests, G. LeRoy, occupies a position of especial prom- 

 inence. LeRoy's Lettres sur les Animaux contain 

 many observations on the training of animals and 

 other indications of intelligence, but their chief dis- 

 tinctive feature is their attempt to explain the actions 

 commonly attributed to instinct as the result of in- 

 telligent experience. A more strenuous attempt in 

 the same direction is found in Erasmus Darwin's 

 Zoonomia. Darwin argues that the marked re- 

 semblance in the form and functions of the bodies 

 of man and animals should lead us to expect a simi- 

 lar endowment of sensations, emotions and mental 

 powers generally. He endeavors to show that the 

 habitual acts of animals are learned like most of 

 our own, and that certain habits appear innate sim- 

 ply because we do not attend with sufficient care to 

 the early stages of their formation. The chick walks 

 soon after hatching, but before this time it moves 



