MENTAL POWERS. 87 



before the mind. * The same would apply to the elephant 

 and the bear making currents in the air or water. The 

 savage would certainly neither know nor care by what law 

 the desired movements were effected; yet his act would be 

 guided by a rude process of reasoning, as surely as would a 

 philosopher in his longest chain of deductions. There 

 would no doubt be this difference between him and one of 

 the higher animals, that he v\^ould take notice of much 

 slighter circumstances and conditions, and would observe 

 any connection between them after much less experience, 

 and this would be of paramount importance. I kept a 

 daily record of the actions of one of my infants, and when 

 he was about eleven months old, and before he could speak 

 a single word, I was continualh' struck with the greater 

 quickness with which all sorts of objects and sounds were 

 associated together in his mind, compared with that of the 

 most intelligent dogs I ever knew. But the higher ani- 

 mals differ in exactly the same way in this power of associ- 

 ation from those low in the scale, such as the pike, as well 

 as in that of drawing inferences and of observation. 



The promptings of reason, after very short experience, 

 are well shown by the following actions of American mon- 

 keys, which stand low in their order. Rengger, a most 

 careful observer, states that when he first gave eggs to his 

 monkeys in Paraguay they smashed them and thus lost 

 much of their contents; afterward they gently hit one end 

 against some hard body, and picked off the bits of shell 

 with their fingers. After cutting themselves only once 

 with any sharp tool, they would not touch it again, or 

 would handle it with the greatest caution. Lumps of 

 sugar were often given them wrapped up in paper ; and 

 Rengger sometimes put a live wasp in the paper, so that in 

 hastily unfolding it they got stung; after this had once hap- 

 pened they always first held the packet to their ears to de- 

 tect any movement within, f 



* Prof. Huxley lias analyzed witli admirable clearness the mental 

 steps by which a man, as well as a dog, arrives at a conclusion in a 

 case analogous to that given in my text. See his article, "Mr. Dar- 

 win's Critics," in the " Contemporary Review," Nov, 1871, p. 462, 

 and in his ** Critiques and Essays," 1873, p. 279, 



f Mr. Belt, in his most interesting work, "The Naturalist in Nic 

 aragua," 1874 (p. 119), likewise descril>es various actions of a tamed 

 Cebus, which, 1 think, clearly s:how that this animal possessed some 

 reasoning power. 



