42 INTRODUCTION. 



it* it were within tiie range of my ability, to enter on an 

 abstruse and metaphysical inquiry into the faculty of 

 reason '^\ It will be sufficient, if I attempt to analyze 



^^3 Reason has been described, as the power or faculty by which 

 the mind is enabled to deduce one proposition from another, or by 

 which it proceeds from premises to consequences. Locke allows to 

 brutes " ideas distinct enough," and that they compare these ideas; 

 but, he thinks, imperfectly. He doubts whether they compound 

 their ideas ; and he altogether denies them the power of abstraction, 

 or of applying the consciousness of particular objects as a general 

 representation of all objects of a similar kind. " For it is evident 

 *' we observe no footsteps in them of making use of general signs 

 ** for universal ideas; from which we have reason to imagine that 

 " they have not the faculty of abstracting or making general ideas, 

 " since they have no use of words, or any other general signs." Is 

 Mr. Locke altogether right in this assumption? Have not other 

 animals, besides man, an intelligible and a very varied language, 

 which is generally understood between each species? Have they 

 not also general sounds for universal ideas : one for fear or dread, 

 let the object of it be what it may ; another for love ; a distinct one 

 for desire? The call to warn their offspring from danger, and that 

 used to draw them together for food, are totally different, but are 

 each well understood ; and that these calls are not pmely instinctive 

 we learn from seeing them understood, as well by ducklings fostered 

 under a hen, as by the young chicks themselves. This may be car- 

 ried still further ; for, if we can believe recorded facts, some birds, 

 particularly parrots, have been not only taught speech, but the ap- 

 plication of it. The ready and appropriate replies to questions 

 asked of the parrot belonging to Captain O'Kelly, must be still 

 fresh in the remembrance of a great many persons now living; for it 

 was no uncommon tiling for some hundred persons to visit this ex- 

 traordinary bird every year. This was, however, even a less re- 

 markable bird than that mentioned by Sir AVilliam Temple, in his 

 Memoirs of what passed in Christendom from 1672 to 1679, p. bly 

 392. I also myself well knew a parrot that was fond of picking 

 of bones, in which it was every day indulged. Whenever it had 

 picked its bone, it used to whistle two or three times, and then call 

 Carlo, Carlo; on which, a dog so named (if within hearing) immedi- 

 ately ran towards the parrot, Mho invariably, on his appearance, 



