59 ON THE REASONING 



that there is no man so stupid, excepting only the insane, who 

 is not capable of arranging divers words, and forming a 

 discourse ; but on the contrary, there is no other animal how- 

 ever perfect that can do the like ; and this not only proves that 

 beasts have less reason than man, but that they have none at 

 all. ' Placed in a logical form the argument runs thus : 



Creatures which cannot form a discourse do not possess 

 reason. 



Animals cannot do this. 



Therefore animals do not possess reason. 



The major premiss is, I think doubtful, the minor one 

 can be positively contradicted, and so this argument falls 

 to the ground 



I am not at all disposed to say that reason cannot exist 

 without speech. BufTon again denied to animals the power 

 of thought, reflection, and even of memory. A learned 

 Jesuit, who was a little more enlightened, allowed them all 

 these powers, but got out of the consequences of his heresy 

 by affirming that all the brute creatures were under the 

 dominion of evil spirits. In fine, we may say that most of them 

 believed brutes to be mere machines, as a naturalist has lately 

 expressed it, wound up to go on in one, and only one particular 

 course, for a certain number of years. Doubtless this myste- 

 rious faculty does exist in them, and infallibly guides them in 

 many things vitally necessary to their existence ; but there can 

 be no doubt in the mind of any unprejudiced person that they 

 have at least some glimmerings of reason — a reason differing 

 from ours to a vast extent in degree, but not at all in kind ; that 

 each species possesses an amount of this faculty correspond- 

 ing to the perfection of its organisation, and that individuals 

 diff'er from each other, even as men do, according to the 

 opportunities they have had for improvement by associating with 

 other animals or with man. It does not follow from this that 

 we are to consider a horse or dog capable of having his 

 reason improved to such an extent, as make him competent to 

 workout an algebraical problem, or to prove that two sides of 

 a triangle are greater than the third. There is many a human 

 being who cannot be brought up to this pitch, but does that 

 warrant us in saying he is without reason ? Now a great write 



