REASON AND LANGUAGE. 135 



*' One of his officers, coming home after a long day's 

 shooting, saw a female monkey running along the rocks, 

 with her young one in her arms. He immediately fired, 

 and the animal fell. On his coming up, she grasped her 

 little one close to her breast, and with her other hand 

 pointed [!] to the wound which the ball had made, and 

 which had entered above her breast. Dipping her 

 finger in the blood, and holding it up, she seemed to 

 reproach him with having been the cause of her pain, 

 and also of that of the young one, to which she frequently 

 pointed." 



Now, that these relations repose on a basis of truth 

 is not to be doubted, neither is the perfect good faith of 

 the narrators to be suspected. That the mother hugged 

 her young one, that the wounded apes made gestures 

 due to anger, pain, terror, or distress, no reasonable 

 critic would question. It is, however, quite evident that 

 these kind-hearted sportsmen read into such movements, 

 motives and meanings due to their own fertile imagina- 

 tions. Such mistaken inferences are not to be wondered 

 at on the part of military men, possibly unskilled either 

 in scientific observation or philosophic reflection ; but 

 it is strange indeed to see their delusions shared by a 

 professed psychologist* 



But we reach the climax of absurdity in a tale 

 which is gravely quoted from a correspondent by Mr. 

 Romanes,! as evidence of exceptional capacity on the 



* For an absurd tale about a gorilla, quoted by a writer who 

 distinguished himself in "moral philosophy" at the London 

 University, see " On Truth," p. 349. 



t p. 190. 



