Analysis ofDr, Hancock^ s Theory. 1167 



cannot intentionally recollect its name; and when he hears the 

 name he cannot recall the absent object : though, by the effect of 

 association, he may feel pleasure when a name is repeated, or 

 acquire the habit of performing certain motions in obedience to it. 



" Some of the inferior animals possess organs sufficiently fitted 

 for uttering articulate sounds ; and accordingly they can easily be 

 taught to pronounce words; but to these words they do not affix 

 any meaning. Other animals cannot be taught to utter words, 

 though they seem to understand many words when spoken by man. 

 But no animal possesses the power of speaking and of understand- 

 ing its ovv^n speech at the same time. The reason is this. 



*' Animals possess sensation, involuntary memory, and a percep- 

 tive faculty ; they also possess voluntary power over their limbs 

 and organs of sense: but the defector inferiority of their intellec- 

 tual nature consists of this, — that they possess no voluntary power 

 over their memory, and therefore cannot intentionally recollect any 

 thing. When they see one object, they cannot, by an act of will, 

 arrest the train of their ideas, and call up the remembrance or idea 

 of another that resembles it ; and hence they cannot arrange or 

 form classes of objects."* 



The Dog is evidently one of the most sagacious of brutes, often 

 an inhabitant of our dwellings, and were he capable of a rational 

 survey of objects, and a rational apprehension of human language, 

 he would, thus circumstanced, acquire with the children of the 

 family, human ideas and human knowledge. No such thing, how- 

 ever, takes place : he is, and ever must be, non-rational^ in the 

 strict and proper sense of this term ; and there is no point of 

 Comparison, in the nature of affinity, between the perceptions of 

 the most tutored animal and the earliest dawnings of rationality in 

 the infant mind. 



The Dog, it is true, has a perception, such as it is, of the mean- 

 ing of the words " come here," and of all others that are necessary 

 to the economy of his proceedings with man ; but it is surely too 

 much to affirm him capable of the thought^ — " when my master 



"* Principles of Moral Science^ by Robert Forsyth, Esq, Edinb. 1805. Sect, 

 On the difference between the Huma» and Brute Mind. 



