INSTINCT AND REASON. 77 



that all his efforts to awaken him were in vain, he was 

 filled with intense anguish, would not allow the dead 

 body to be removed, refused all sustenance or comfort, 

 spending his time between rage and grief, till after five 

 days of such an existence, one morning he was found 

 dead, with his head lovingly reclined on the carcase of 

 his little friend 1 . 



Were this only a fable instead of an actual incident, 

 there is nothing in it revolting to our sense of prob- 

 ability, because we are perfectly aware that the lower 

 animals constantly give indications of what in ourselves 

 we call the moral feelings. We continually see them 

 behaving as we ourselves behave when we submit to 

 self-sacrifice for the sake of those we love. 



We see many animals in possession of laws and con- 

 stitutions answering to our own in all but one particular, 

 namely, that theirs appear to be fixed while ours are 

 continually changing. But most likely we overrate 

 both the fixed character of theirs, and the instability 

 of our own. Changes in the politics of an oyster may 

 easily escape the notice of a man in the midst of some 

 vast revolution (as he thinks it) of human affairs, some 

 vast revolution which proves in the end to be nothing 

 more than a change of names. For mankind the ac- 

 quisition of language has indefinitely quickened the 

 movement of ideas, but where language is without the 

 aids of writing and printing, as among savage tribes, and 

 where the language itself is an imperfect instrument 



1 See ' Knight's Half-Hours with the Best Authors.' No. 185 : from 

 'The Fool of Quality.' 



