MAN AND BRUTE, II 



psychology that has always been taken more or less for 

 granted — namely, that the one is rational and the other 

 irrational — may likewise be passed over after what has been 

 said in the chapter on Reason in my previous work. For it 

 is there shown that if we use the term Reason in its true, as 

 distinguished from its traditional sense, there is no fact in 

 animal psychosis more patent than that this psychosis is capable 

 in no small degree of ratiocination. The source of the very- 

 prevalent doctrine that animals have no germ of reason is, 

 I think, to be found in the fact that reason attains a much 

 higher level of development in man than in animals, while 

 instinct attains a higher development in animals than in man : 

 popular phraseology, therefore, disregarding the points of 

 similarity while exaggerating the more conspicuous points 

 of difference, designates all the mental faculties of the animal 

 instinctive, in contradistinction to those of man, which are 

 termed rational. But unless we commit ourselves to an 

 obvious reasoning in a circle, we must avoid assuming that 

 all actions of animals are instinctive, and then arguing that, 

 because they are instinctive, therefore they differ in kind from 

 those actions of man which are rational. The question really 

 lies in what is here assumed, and can only be answered by 

 examining in what essential respect instinct differs from 

 reason. This I have endeavoured to do in my previous work 

 with as much precision as the nature of the subject permits ; 

 and I think I have made it evident, in the first place, that 

 there is no such immense distinction between instinct and 

 reason as is generally assumed — the former often being 



the evidence which leads one to believe that one's fellow-man feels? The only 

 evidence in this argument from analogy is the similarity of his structure and of 

 his actions to one's own, and if that is good enough to prove that one's fellow-man 

 feels, surely it is good enough to prove that an ape feels," etc. {Critiqites and 

 Addresses, p. 2S2). To this statement of the case Mr. Mivart offers, indeed, a 

 criticism, but it is one of a singularly feeble character. He says, " Surely it is 

 not by similarity of structure or actions, but by language that men are placed 

 in communication with one another." To this it seems sufficient to ask, in the 

 first place, whether language is not action ; and, in the next, whether, as ex- 

 pressive of suffering, articulate speech is regarded by us as more "eloquent" 

 than inarticulrte cries and gestures? 



