INSTINCT AND REASON. 71 



human habitations, and make use of human manufac- 

 tures, is a proof that they are capable of choice both as 

 to locality and materials. The often-observed circum- 

 stance, that animals in a newly-discovered country are 

 without fear of man, a fear which they speedily acquire 

 from experience of his mischievous propensities, is a 

 clear proof that they are capable of learning caution. 

 It cannot be pretended that a caution which thus only 

 comes in conjunction with experience is instinctive, or 

 anything- else than the result of observation, and there- 

 fore a sign of intelligent judgment. The lower animals, 

 then, can learn prudence ; can profit by experience. In 

 the training of domesticated animals, the same motives 

 of pleasure and pain are applied, and applied effectually, 

 as are used in the education of human beings by parents 

 and schoolmasters and lawgivers. This could not be if 

 the groundwork of the moral nature were not the same 

 in man and the lower animals. Addison was inclined 

 to hold the old opinion, that ' God himself is the soul of 

 brutes,' Deus est anima brutorum. ' One would wonder,' 

 he says, ' to hear sceptical men disputing for the reason 

 of animals, and telling us it is only our pride and preju- 

 dices that will not allow them the use of that faculty 1 .' 

 And yet his charming essays upon the natural history of 

 animals, in which he took so keen a personal pleasure, 

 with very little alteration, might be read as arguments 

 in defence of the opinion he thus condemns. He re- 

 marks that birds, which ordinarily drive away their 

 young as soon as they are able to get their own liveli- 



1 ' The Spectator/ No. 120. 



