INSTINCT AND REASON. 75 



starting after stumbling- a conditional instinct, that 

 appears only in those horses that have been pre- 

 viously beaten when they stumbled ! We need not 

 suppose, as Lord Bacon appears to have done, that 

 ' dogs know the dog-killer ' by a kind of power of 

 divination 1 . By their watchful habits, and quick in- 

 ference from acute observation of the few particulars 

 they are able to comprehend, it can scarcely be doubted 

 that dogs learn something of the dispositions and in- 

 tentions of mankind, recognize their humours, and 

 distinguish those who are friendly to themselves from 

 those who are hostile. 



Numberless writers have noticed the different dis- 

 positions of the lower animals, differing not merely in 

 separate species, but in various individuals of the same. 

 There has been no scruple in taking the brutes them- 

 selves as types and emblems of moral qualities. Almost 

 every vice and virtue has been unsparingly assigned to 

 one or other of the brute creation. They are brave 

 or cowardly, savage and treacherous, gentle and gene- 

 rous, industrious, idle, obedient, wayward, affectionate, 

 malicious, working always for the common good, or full 

 of rapacity and selfishness. It is likely enough that we 

 often misapply these epithets, and call that courage 

 which is only consciousness of strength, and that malig- 

 nant ferocity which is really a hungry stomach and a 



1 'Natural History,' 985. ' It is a common experience that dogs 

 know the dog-killer ; when, as in times of infection, some petty fellow 

 is sent out to kill the dogs ; and that though they have never seen him 

 before, yet they will all come forth, and bark and fly at him.' 



