ANIMAL INTELLIGENCE. 223 



with regard to the emotional life of animals, so I will pass on at once 

 to the faculty of Conscience. Of course, the moral sense, as it occurs 

 in ourselves, involves ideas of high abstraction, so that in animals we 

 can only expect to meet with a moral sense in a very rudimentary 

 form ; and, therefore, even if it is true that no indications of such a 

 sense are to be met with in animals, the fact would not establish any 

 diflFerence in kind between animal intelligence and human. But I am 

 inclined to believe that in highly-intelligent, highly-sympathetic, and 

 tolerably well-treated animals, the germs of a moral sense become 

 apparent. To give two instances : I once shut up a Skye terrier in a 

 room by himself while T went to a friend's house. The dog must have 

 been thrown into a violent passion at being left behind, for when I 

 returned I found that he had torn the window-curtains to shreds. He 

 was in great joy at seeing me ; but as soon as I picked up one of the 

 torn shreds of the curtains the animal gave a howl and ran screaming 

 up the staircase. Now, this dog was never chastised in his life, so that 

 I can only explain his conduct as an expression of the remorse which 

 he suffered at having done in a passion what he knew would cause me 

 annoyance. So far as I can interpret the facts, his sympathetic affec- 

 tion for me, coupled with the memory of his misdeeds, created in his 

 mind a genuine feeling of repentance. 



The other instance I have to narrate occurred with the same terrier. 

 Only once in his life was he ever known to steal ; and on this occasion, 

 when very hungry, he took a cutlet from a table and carried it under a 

 sofa. I saw him perform this act of larceny, but pretended not to have 

 done so, and for a number of minutes he remained under the sofa with 

 his feelings of hunger struggling against his feelings of dut}^ At last 

 the latter triumphed ; for he brought the stolen cutlet and laid it at 

 my feet. Immediately after doing so he again ran under the sofa, and 

 from this retreat no coaxing could draw him. Moreoverj when I patted 

 his head he turned away his face in a ludicrously conscience-stricken 

 manner. Now, I regard this instance as particularly valuable, from the 

 fact that the terrier in question had never been beaten, and hence that 

 it cannot have been" fear of bodily pain which prompted these actions. 

 On the whole, therefore, I can only suppose that we have in these 

 actions evidence of as high a development of the ethical faculty as is 

 attainable by the logic of feelings when unassisted by the logic of 

 signs — that is to say, a grade A^ery nearly, if not quite, as high as that 

 with which we meet in low savages, young children, many idiots, and 

 uneducated deaf-mutes. 



This allusion to savages, children, idiots, and deaf-mutes, leads me 

 to the next division of my subject. 



Prof. St, George Mivart has said that an interesting book might be 

 written on the stupidity of animals. I am inclined to think that a still 

 more interesting book might be written on the stupidity of savages. 

 For it is a matter of not the least interest how much stupidity any 



