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♦ KNOWLEDGE ♦ 



[Jan. 9, 1885. 



the rank of man were merely different kinds of self-acting 

 machines having nothing in common with him, has wholly 

 exploded ; phyfciologists having conclusively ]iroved tliat, in 

 whatever organism there is a nervons system, there also 

 some kind of consciousness exists, the states of conscious- 

 ness being more varied, more acute, and better organised in 

 proportion as the comiilexity of the nervous system is 

 greater and its substance more developed. 



Starting with the proposition that there is nothing in 

 mind which was not derived from the senses, we find that 

 as we lise in the scale of evolution, and the senses become 

 mores])pcialised and acute, so also the mental states become 

 more com]ilex and more numerous, until wc reach the stage 

 of the highest quadrumana. 



From these man is not distinguished Vjy any difference in 

 the sense organs, save in that of touch. Many beasts have 

 keener senses of smell and hearing than man, and most birds 

 have far keener sight and better apprehension of locality. 

 It is probrtble, also, that the lower animals possess certain 

 kinds of knowledge at which man can only guess, and that 

 they have powers of thought which men are too apt to un- 

 derrate. In fact, men are given to ascribing too much of 

 the intelligence of animals to instinct and too little of 

 human intelligence to the same cause. Instinct is the 

 inherited result of experience, and it influences action so 

 subtly, that in most cases it is impossible to discover 

 where it ends and individual experience comes into play in 

 what we call reasoning. 



I can, howev( r, cite a case of reasoning on experience 

 that could hardly have been inherited, of which I was an 

 eye-witness. While I was Jiaying a call the other day, the 

 lady of the house, offtring refreshment, went to the side- 

 board and got out a decanter of sherry and some glusses. 

 On this her little pet dog, a Maltese terrier, became very 

 much excited, and watched her eagerly. When the wine was 

 ])')ured out and handed round, he stood up on his hind legs 

 and begged in turn of all the guests, and, as no one had any- 

 thing to give him, he began to cry and whine in a most 

 nu-Iancholy fashion. I asked the meaning of this extraordi- 

 nary behaviour, and my friend answered that the dog was 

 always accustomed to .=ee biscuits brought out with the wine. 

 For these he entertained a sincere aff'ection, and the visitors 

 usually gave him little pieces of them. Former experience 

 had led hiin to make a strong mental association in his 

 mind between wine and biscuits ; hence, when the sherry 

 made its appearance, he inferred that the biscuits were not 

 far distant, and in fact it was only by showing him tlie 

 empty cuphoard, and letting him examine our hands and 

 find them guiltless of crumbs, that we could convince his 

 reason that the two were not inseparalile liy nature. By a 

 similar pi ocess of reasoning a baby will associate the idea of 

 its feediiig-hottle with that of satisfied appetite, and if by 

 chance it were to suck at the bottle and find nothing forth- 

 coming we may imagine that for the moment its faith in 

 the order of nature would be shaken. We have all to 

 experience some such shocks to our established beliefs in 

 the course of time! 



The laws of association by similarity and contiguity are 

 evidently the same for the lower animals as for man ; but 

 people are very fond of saying that the lower animals do 

 not generalise. That this is untrue can easily be proved by 

 watching the liabits of the more intelligent. 



For example, monkeys and parrots are said by careful 

 observers never to attempt to crack bad nuts, and they 

 seem to decide whether or not a nut is good, by its weight. 

 A monkey will serve as a good illustration, and we will 

 examine this jihase of mind on strictly logical principles. 



Experience, whether inherited as what we call instinct, 

 or of its own getting, or both combined, has brought it to 



the conclu.fion that nuts which are of light weight contain 

 no kernel. Jacko picks up a particular nut which is lights 

 and at once, concluding that it has no kernel, throws it 

 away without more ado. Here is abstraction of the fact 

 of lightness, common to certain nuts, connected causa- 

 tively with the fact of «o ke.rnel, generalised by application 

 to all 7iiits ; and then comes the reasoning that what is 

 true of all must be true of each individual. Let us imagine 

 this creature gifted with the power of speech, and teaching 

 a class of young ones to chop logic. A disciple might ask,, 

 " Why, sir, did you throw that nut away 1" and the sage 

 would answer, "No light nuts have kernels ; this nut is a 

 light nut : therefore this nut has no kernel." 



Here, in showing the likeness between the intelligence 

 of the lower animals and that of man, we also touch upon 

 the difference. The monkey may know that all light nuts 

 have no kernels, but it has no means of communicating this 

 knowledge. The lower animals may have certain general no- 

 tions, but, as far as we know, they are without means of ex- 

 pressing them. They can communicate particular things of 

 knowledge, as, for example, agoatcanlead its kid to the water 

 and .show it how to drink. General notions, however, are 

 based on similarity, and this no animal except man can 

 express ; to take a simple instance, the goat can put before 

 its kid several difTerent kinds of herb, but the kid must 

 discover for itself which are alike and which different, for 

 its parent cannot teach it this. 



There is indeed a language* which is shared alike by all 

 animals, that of the feelings — expressed in cries or move- 

 ments. A cry of terror or of pain expresses the same 

 meaning, comes it from bird, beast, or man. An angry man 

 frowns, and an angry bird ruffles its feathers. A child rubs 

 its face up against one's cheek as a token of affection, and 

 a cat rubs up against its master's leg to express the same 

 sentiment. A dog who is ashamed of himself puts his 

 tail between his legs and slinks away with bis head down ; 

 we say of a man in a similar condition of mind that " he 

 looked small." 



In all animals possessing vocal organs, the voice is used 

 for the expression of love. Thus the bird has liis love 

 .songs, and their tone and sweetness improves in the spring; 

 beasts have their love calls, and the quality of the male's 

 voice alters at certain times, and the man sings serenades. 

 Music is the natural and legitimate expression of the 

 tender passion, and to the present day I think if anjone 

 had tlie curio.sity to inquire into the matter he would find 

 that, out of every hundred songs publi-shed, ninety-nine 

 have matters of the heart for their theme. 



The language of the will is also, to a great extent, 

 common property. The dog looks round in the street to 

 see if its puppy is following, and its gestures clearly show 

 that the puppy is intended to follow. A cat slaps her 

 kitten if it departs from the parental idea of the way of 

 right conduct. A man points to the door, and the other 

 one, if he is neither strong nor a fool, quits without delay, 

 while a dog, \inder similar provocation, would give an 

 angry bark. 



We can imagine the primitive man as expressing him- 

 self, like other quadrumana, wholly by gesture ; but, as 

 civilisation advances, gesture sinks into greater at d greater 

 disuse, and gives place to the language of the intellect 

 jiroper, the language which belongs to man alone, which 

 can express relations between things and feelings — Agree- 

 ment and Difference. We have in articulate speech not 

 only the medium for expressing thought, but words are, 

 to a very large extent, the medium for thought itself. 



* We must disrpg.ird the original meaning of the word language 

 = tongue, and understand it to mean a system of signs. 



