On Animal Instinct : in its Relation to the Mind of Man. 331 



ever founded on deliberate effort the instincts of their de>cendants. 

 All the knowledge and all the resource of mind which is involved in 

 these instincts is a reflection of some x\gency which is outside the 

 creatures which exhibit them. In this respect it may be said with 

 truth that they are machines. But then they are machines with this 

 peculiarity, that they not only reflect, but also in various measures and 

 degrees partake of, the attributes of mind. It is always by some one 

 or other of these attributes that they are guided — by fear, or by desire, 

 or by affection, or by mental impulses which go straight to the results 

 of reasoning without its processes. That all these mental attributes 

 are connected with a physicd organism which is constructed on 

 mechanical principles, is not a matter of speculation. It is an obvious 

 and acknowledged fact. The question is not whether, in this sense, 

 animals are machines, but whethar the work which has been assigned 

 to them does or does not partake in various measures and degrees of 

 the various qualities which we recognize in ourselves as the qualities of 

 sensation, of consciousness, and of will. 



On this matter it seems clear to me that Professor Huxley has 

 seriously misconceived the doctrine of Descartes. It is true that he 

 quotes a passage as representing the view of " orthodox Cartesians," 

 in which it is asserted that animals " eat without pleasure and cry 

 without pain," and that they "desire" nothing as well as "know" 

 nothing. But this passage is quoted, not from Descartes, but from 

 Malebranehe. Malebranehe was a great man ; but on this subject he 

 was the disciple and not the master ; and it seems almost a law that 

 no utterance of original genius can long escape the fate of being 

 travestied and turned to nonsense by those who take it up at second 

 hand. Descartes' letter to More of the 5th Feb., 1649, proVes con- 

 clusively that he fully recognized in the lower animals the existence 

 of all the affections of mind except "Thought" (la Pens6e), or Reason 

 properly so called. He ascribes to them the mental emotions of fear, 

 of anger, and of desire, as well as all the sensations of pleasure and of 

 pain. What he means by Thought is clearly indicated in the passage 

 in which he points to Language as the peculiar product and the sole 

 index of thought — Language, of course, taken in its broadest sense, 

 signifying any system of signs by Avhich general or abstract ideas are 

 expressed and communicated. This, as Descartes truly says, is never 

 wanting even in the lowest of men, and is never present, even in the 

 highest of the brutes. But he distinctly says that the lower animals, 

 having the same organs of sight, of hearing, of taste, etc., with our- 

 selves, have also the same sensations, as well as the same affections of 

 anger, of fear and of desire— affections which, being mental, he ascribes 



