250 The Scottish Naturalist. 



ANIMAL PSYCHOSIS. 



( Continued from p. 2 1 2. ) 

 By the Rev. J. WARDROP. 



JESSE of Selborne says : "There is not a faculty of the human 

 mind of which some evident proofs of its existence may not 

 be found in dogs." The author of " Rab and his Friends" and 

 " Our Dogs/' asserts, " I differ from Professor Ferrier in think- 

 ing that the dog has the reflex eye, and is a very knowing being." 

 Now, in such men all this is very beautiful. In them it is all 

 in a sense quite right. In the face of anything that these 

 standard enthusiasts may find it good to say in filling up their 

 glowing pictures, one can hardly have the heart either to argue 

 or to disbelieve. But we protest against the ordinary run of 

 scientists being allowed any such privilege. They must keep 

 vigorously to facts and logic. How should Mr. Huxley be 

 allowed to set down this — " I may add the expression of my 

 belief, that the attempt to draw a psychical distinction between 

 the animal world and ourselves is futile, and that even the 

 highest faculties of feeling and intellect begin to germinate in 

 lower forms of life f and then in the same breath to define 

 "ourselves ' as "the only consciously intelligent denizens of 

 this world !" — (Man's Place, pp. 109-110). Is the presence or 

 absence of " conscious intelligence " of no account as a dis- 

 tinction ? Such treatment will not further the solution of our 

 problem. 



Dr. Lauder Lindsay, after a laborious investigation into the 

 mental manifestations of the animal world, arranged under 

 twenty-nine headings, and embracing an immense array of facts 

 and authorities, comes as we have already seen, to the conclu- 

 sion, that " there is no essential distinction between man and 

 other animals." I would beg to make the following remarks on 

 this conclusion, and on the logic by which it is supported. 



1. Is there not a one-sidedness in the citation of authorities 

 for facts and opinions, observable all through the paper ? For 

 instance, under the difficult heading " Abstraction," we have 

 cited " a recent reviewer" whose complexion is very apparent 

 from his words, Milne-Edwards, and Maudsley, who is a con- 

 stant authority under all the headings; but we have not John 

 Locke, who first strongly signalized this faculty in the discussion; 

 nor John Miiller, the most philosophical of physiologists ; nor 



