LAUGEL'S PROBLEMS OF NATUUE AND LIFE. 355 



above the summit; but still lie is a member of this 



series, and to be regarded as such. 



We here approach a very interesting relation of 

 Man to the inferior animals, one involving the whole 

 question of reason and instinct, and beset with difficul- 

 ties not easy to overcome. Broadly speaking, indeed, 

 we may assert, that in the whole scale of being, from 

 Man downwards, these two faculties are found in in- 

 verse ratio to one another. But in reality it is often 

 wholly impossible to separate them. They co-exist, 

 and are in such way blended together that each has 

 power to modify or contravene the other. It is diffi- 

 cult to gauge exactly in other animals faculties and 

 functions which we find it hard enough to define in 

 ourselves ; and it is only by taking the most character- 

 istic cases of reason and instinct in animals that we can 

 rightly discriminate between them. Yet the distinc- 

 tion is a momentous one, and especially interesting in 

 relation to Man as the intellectual ruler of the earth. 



Had we space for it much might be said regarding 

 that faculty of reason among the higher animals, both 

 wild and domesticated, to which we have already 

 slightly alluded. Its existence is familiarly recognised 

 in the phrases habitually applied to them ; yet this 

 very familiarity enfeebles, as in so many other cases, 

 that sentiment of wonder which the fact might well 

 inspire. Of their reasoning faculty no happier definition 

 can be given than that of Cuvier : ' Leur intelligence 

 execute des operations du meme genre.' Milton says 

 in more guarded phrase, c They reason not contemp- 

 tibly.' Locke, while conceding reason, denied to them 



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