POWERS OF ANIMALS. &0 



tells US of two kinds of reasoning, to wit, that concerning 

 matters of fact, which are incapable of strict logical proof; and 

 that concerning the relations of ideas, which latter kind may be 

 carried on independently of all external relations. We reason 

 concerning matters of fact solely by experience, and not from 

 any necessary connection between them : we cannot prove 

 that the sun will rise to-morrow, neither can we by any 

 amount of purely mental exertion prove that London is on the 

 Thames— we must appeal to the senses. Of course this kind of 

 argument, known as that by Induction, is far below the other. 

 It is this however, which the lower animals share largely 

 with man ; whether they share the higher kind with us 

 or not is a question upon which I will not enter, but will simply 

 affirm that they are capable of drawing a conclusion from 

 several inductions. A dog believes that if he goes too 

 near the fire he will get burnt ; he believes this because he has 

 experienced it several times : a young one does not know it, 

 —if it were instinct, the fire would be avoided by him from 

 his birth. Without entering any deeper into the metaphysical 

 part of the subject, I will now proceed to two arguments. 

 And first of all concerning the speech of animals : is not this 

 premiss self-evident— that any creature exercising the faculty 

 of speech, does so to transmit its own thoughts, or to make 

 known its wants to another ? Where there is speech there 

 must be the power of thinking. If we can prove then that 

 the lower animals possess speech, we must acknowledge 

 that they can think, and the power of so doing surely is a 

 " reasoning faculty." It is not necessary that their mode of 

 conducting their speech should be the same as ours ; if they 

 can make known their wants by words, signs and sounds, or in 

 any way whatever, they possess speech in the broad sense of 

 the word. A deaf and dumb man who makes intelligible signs 

 with his fingers, possesses speech. Now who is prepared to 

 deny such a power to the animals below ourselves ? The 

 various calls of the hen to her young, which they perfectly 

 understand ; the crossing of antennae by bees and ants ; the 

 different tones of the dog towards his master and towards a 

 stranger — when he is frightened and when he is hurt : nume- 

 rous anecdotes referring to all these will recur to the mind of 

 every reader of Natural History. We have read of wonderful 

 Viziers of mighty Sultans, who could relate the conversations 



