LIFE Otf THE EARTH. 139 



stincts are doubtless largely prospective, and the more 

 perfectly so the lower we go down in the scale of life. 

 But does any animal intellect, save that of man, possess 

 this power ? An old English writer speaks of ' the 

 boon to brutes that they are nescient of evils to come.' 

 And this may be true ; yet still with admission that 

 they have some faculty of forecasting the future, where 

 not remote as to time, and coining in close relation and 

 sequence to the habitual events of their existence. 

 This forms, in fact, a part of the education of animals 

 a term we cannot refuse to adopt for those conditions, 

 natural or artificial, through which their several 

 faculties are fully evolved or modified, and in many 

 instances even made to supersede the natural instincts 

 of the species. 



To other faculties, intellectual in kind, it is impos- 

 sible not to annex the sense of humour, so conspicuous 

 in very many animals, though not duly noticed in the 

 inference it affords. The gambols, gestures, and sly 

 artifices of monkeys well depicture what are the sports 

 and tricks of human childhood. The dog, toying with 

 his master or gambolling with other dogs, shows his 

 feeling of fun as plainly as if it were put into words ; 

 and a little reflection will show how much lies beneath 

 this single and simple fact. 



The intellectual faculties, then, are alike in kind, 

 while far inferior in power and capacity to those pos- 

 sessed even by the lower races of mankind. As 

 physiology tells us of stages in the foetal growth of 

 man corresponding with what is the final type of in- 

 ferior forms of life, so does the mind of the untutored 



