84 PROCEEDINGS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY 



ized needles as to their position. Mere affection attaches the human 

 mother to her child, or the bird to her own offspring, rather than to 

 the young of other animals ; and, the attachment existing, reflection or 

 Instinct teaches it how to feed and protect them. In like manner, 

 sympathetic or unconscious imitation, which has been classed with the 

 propensities, is also common to man and the brute, and is equally irra- 

 tional or independent of thought in both. Thus, to borrow an exam- 

 ple from Adam Smith, when a rope-dancer is performing a perilous 

 feat, the spectators writhe and twist their bodies, accommodating their 

 motions to what they suppose to be necessary for the acrobat's safety. 

 And the amount of this sympathetic action is proportioned to the 

 absence of thought, or to the degree in which they give themselves up 

 to the impulse of the moment. If they are cool enough to reflect on 

 the nature of the case and the proprieties of the occasion, they sit still. 

 So the monkey, the parrot, and the mocking-bird spontaneously and 

 blindly repeat movements and sounds, the purpose and meaning of 

 which they are certainly ignorant of. The parrot can easily be taught 

 to articulate, but not to talk, — that is, to utter words at the right mo- 

 ment through a perception of their meaning. Man can imitate ration- 

 ally, or with a distinct cognition at the moment of the purpose to be 

 obtained by the repeated act ; but the monkey cannot. 



If those mental endowments which have now been shown to be pos- 

 sessed in common by the human, and at least a part of the brute crea- 

 tion, be examined, in order to discover, if possible, some criterion or 

 general characteristic whereby they are distinguished both from In- 

 stinct and Intellect, it will appear that the former, so far as they are 

 exercised by the lower animals, relate only to particular cases and in- 

 dividual objects, while Intellect necessarily involves some power of 

 generalization, and of drawing inferences from general principles. To 

 adopt a distinction familiar to psychologists, the former are concerned 

 only with Intuitions, while the latter i-equires the exercise of Thought. 

 Animals can judge only of the object that is actually before them. 

 This or that one thing they can perceive, remember, like or dislike, as- 

 sociate with some other one thing, and judge whether it will satisfy a 

 present want. But they cannot form classes of things ; they cannot 

 generalize their experience, and thus form premises from which gen- 

 eral conclusions can be drawn. This would be to exercise Reason 

 properly so called ; and Reason is a function of Thought. Consequently, 

 animals cannot consciously combine means for the attainment of a 



