MENTAL POWERS. 89 



It has, I think, now been shown that man and the higher 

 animals, especially the Primates, have some few instincts in 

 common. All have the same senses, intuitions and sensa- 

 tions similar passions, affections and emotions, even the 

 more complex ones, such as jealousy, suspicion, emulation, 

 gratitude and magnanimity; they practice deceit and are 

 revengeful; they are sometimes susceptible to ridicule, and 

 even have a sense of humor; they feel wonder and curiosity; 

 they possess the same faculties of imitation, attention, de- 

 liberation, choice, memory, imagination, the association of 

 ideas and reason, though in very different degrees. The 

 individuals of the same species graduate in intellect from 

 absolute imbecility to high excellence. They are also liable 

 to insanity, though far less often than in the case of man.* 

 Nevertheless, many authors have insisted that man is 

 divided by an insuperable barrier from all the lower animals 

 in his mental faculties. I formerly made a collection of 

 above a score of such aphorisms, but they are almost worth- 

 less, as their wide difference and number prove the diffi- 

 culty, if not the impossibility, of the attempt. It has been 

 asserted that man alone is capable of progressive improve- 

 ment; that he alone makes use of tools or fire, domesticates 

 other animals, or possesses property; that no animal has the 

 power of abstraction or of forming general concepts, is self- 

 conscious and comprehends itself; that no animal employs 

 language; that man alone has a sense of beauty, is liable to 

 caprice, has the feeling of gratitude, mystery, etc. ; believes 

 in Grod, or is endowed with a conscience. I will hazard a 

 few remarks on the more important and interesting of these 

 points. 



Archbishop Sumner formerly maintained! that man 

 alone is capable of progressive improvement. That he is 

 capable of incomparably greater and more rapid improve- 



have been drawn, seem to us to rest upon no better foundation than 

 a great many otlier metaphysical distinctions ; that is, the assumption 

 that because you can give two things different names, they must 

 therefore have different natures. It is difficult to understand how 

 anybody who has ever kept a dog, or seen an elephant, can have any 

 doubts as to an animal's power of performing the essential processes 

 of reasoning." 



*See "Madness in Animals," by Dr. W. Lauder Lindsay, ia 

 11 Journal of Mental Science," July, 1871. 



fQuoted by Sir G. Lyell, " Antiquity of Man," p. 497- 



