472 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



THE ^ESTHETIC SENSE AND RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT 



IN ANIMALS. 



By Prof. E. P. EVANS. 



DR. WILKS reduces the chief difference between man and 

 brute to the " smallness of knowledge of the fine arts pos- 

 sessed by the latter " ; and a passing remark made by Prof. Hux- 

 ley, in one of his essays, would seem to imply a disposition to 

 draw the line of separation between animal and human intelli- 

 gence at this point. Prantl regards the phrase " die Kunsttriebe 

 der Thiere " as a metaphorical expression involving a confusion 

 of terms, since animals, with all their apparent artistic ability 

 and taste shown in constructing and decorating their habitations, 

 do not seek to embody ideas in material forms — an assumption 

 which begs the very question in dispute. Schiller, in his well- 

 known poem, Die Kimstler, makes man's pre-eminence consist 

 solely in his artistic faculty : 



" In Fleiss kann dich die Biene meistern, 



In der Geschicklichkeit ein Wurm dien Lehrer sein, 

 Dein Wissen theilest du nrit vorgezogenen Geistern, 

 Die Kunst, o Mensch, hast du allein." 



In diligence the bee can master thee, 

 In skillfulness a worm thy teacher be, 

 Knowledge thou dost with higher spirits own, 

 But art, O man, thou dost possess alone. 



Herbart, however, does not recognize this demarcation. " If 

 one asks for a specific characteristic of mankind, which is not 

 physical, but spiritual, original, and universal, and does not re- 

 solve itself into a more or less, I confess," he says, "that I do not 

 know of any such distinction and do not think it exists." He 

 then enumerates the advantages possessed by man — namely, 

 hands, speech, and a long and helpless infancy, to the use and 

 influence of which are due the extraordinary growth of the hu- 

 man brain in size and complexity and the corresponding develop- 

 ment of intellectual power. In the acuteness of his senses and in 

 many peculiarities of physical structure man is inferior to some 

 of the lower animals. He has not, says Prof. Cope, kept pace 

 with other mammals in the development of his teeth, which are 

 " thoroughly primitive " ; his nose is less serviceable than that of 

 the dog; the eagle has a far better eye; the ankle joint of the 

 sheep is, as a piece of mechanism, stronger and less liable to de- 

 rangement than the corresponding joint in man ; the horse's foot 

 consists of a single compact elastic toe, on which the animal runs 



