Essays on Life 



"what's what, and that's as high as meta- 

 physic wit can fly." And they not only 

 know what's what themselves, but can impart 

 to one another any new what's-whatness 

 that they may have acquired, for they are 

 notoriously able to instruct and correct one 

 another. 



Against this Professor Max Miiller con- 

 tends that we can know nothing of what 

 goes on in the mind of any lower animal, 

 inasmuch as we are not lower animals our- 

 selves. " We can imagine anything we like 

 about what passes in the mind of an animal," 

 he writes, " we can know absolutely nothing." l 

 It is something to have it in evidence that he 

 conceives animals as having a mind at all, but 

 it is not easy to see how they can be supposed 

 to have a mind, without being able to acquire 

 ideas, and having acquired, to read, mark, 

 learn, and inwardly digest them. Surely the 

 mistake of requiring too much evidence is 

 hardly less great than that of being contented 

 with too little. We, too, are animals, and can 

 no more refuse to infer reason from certain 



1 " Science of Thought,," Longmans, 1887, p. 9. 

 216 



